I recently started working on memorial videos for people. I love taking pictures, but also looking at and scanning old pictures. The video allows me to take a bunch and string them together in a hopefully logical manner that also tells a story about someone or a family, put to music and a theme for them to enjoy. In doing this project for a friend, I suggested we look at their family tree as well.
Initially I was suggesting that they look at doing their family tree and pointed them at ancestry.com. I figured I could add to her video some snippets of a tree like graphic to help with gaps in the video where there were no pictures of some people (note to you all - take pictures of everyone even if they hate having their photo taken - someday you and they will appreciate having those shots of them). But I got antsy after about sixty seconds and I went to ancestry.com and starting doing the research myself.
I LOVE research and particularly genealogy. To me it is as close as I currently get to time travel outside of Doctor Who (the tenth Doctor being the best) and I do so want to travel in time (back not forward). Almost immediately I was again hooked.
I'd worked on my own family's history for nearly a decade until a falling out made it too sensitive for me to work on. This is just as exciting to me even though not my family. They become my family as I learn more about them.
It all came back, the excitement over the wealth of information on a single line of census data! Why was she living with her parents at the age of 31? Oh, she was divorced - how scandalous in the twenties...I wonder what happened. They owned a radio set. Why was the government asking about that? More research!!
Is it sick that I enjoy research so much? Maybe. But being a closet detective/librarian/stalker, it just fits with who I am.
So I use my favorite tools to find out more. The Radio question was fascinating - more about that later after I research it further. And yes, she was divorced, but then remarried, a wealthy younger man. More interesting soap opera like thoughts come to mind.
As I work it gives me things that I can use to trigger the living in that family and listen to stories. A big voyeuristic, but anecdotes add to a great family history story. It's all about stories. Everything we are is all about stories. Stories we live, remember, perceive, tell ourselves, tell others - some accurate, some not.
