What's Missing When We Do This

I've been plugging away at this family genealogy for many months now. I had no idea it could be so addicting. Listening to those who've done far more in their advice has really helped. Source, source, source. This is where it gets tricky. Who has time to go to all these court houses all over the Midwest and hunt this stuff down? I may have to wait until I retire.

The part that's missing is learning about who these people were. What were they like? How did they move in the world? Sometimes, you can get a glimpse through news articles, but mostly, you have only raw data and some dates which will stand to represent that person in time. Kind of sad.

There are those who have taken the time to interview those that came before them. Some people have written things down to tell their story, but mostly people don't do that. They are too busy living the life to write about what it was like.

When I run across something like this, I get excited. Mr. Good has spent lots of time putting together a cohesive set of photos, interviews, books, and genealogy information that tell a story. I want to be him when I grow up.

In contrast, I'm think of an example of a guy who married a relative whom I would never had known more than name, rank, serial number without a story being passed down. He had a nice name. He fathered many children with her, then they divorced in a time when it wasn't common. I knew nothing about him but his date of birth, death, and the names of his kids. I interviewed another very distant family member who had talked to his children. Turns out he was a mean, no-account drunk, who disowned his last three children because he believed they weren't his, left the family with nothing and died a penniless drunk somewhere in Detroit, but not before marrying a 17-year-old in his 50s.

The unfortunate thing is the generation that would hold the key to much of this information is for the most part, now gone. I've interviewed a number of people who are still hanging in there and in some cases, I should have talked to them 10 years earlier - the memory fails, the names are forgotten, the story is lost.

Over the next little bit, while I continue to plug away at finding the stories, I've decided to start telling the ones I remember. Hopefully it will help me and possibly others who are doing as I'm doing and sifting through data instead of reaching the heart of who a person was.