On a recent trip to my hometown I stayed up late with family rummaging through old photographs and bottles of wine. The whole experience left me thinking about connections and roots, and I’m edging toward taking on a family tree project.
As I think about all of these branches, the complexity of such a project almost overwhelms me. I followed a couple branches in a brief interview with my mother, and came up with more than two dozen people. That covers just first cousins, my mom and her brothers and sisters, and my maternal grandparents. One thing quickly became clear: This project can be started, but never finished.
That got me thinking about scope. Where do I want to take this? The most important limb to follow for me, right now, runs through my maternal grandparents to their parents. Tracking down important names, faces and dates through that generation should keep me busy for a while.
I ordered Genealogy Online for Dummies from the local library with the hopes that it can offer tips to focus my efforts. I find myself asking questions like, do I need to keep track of relatives’ religious affiliations? How do I handle second marriages? What about children from earlier marriages? Hopefully, reading up can help me learn to track and file all of these kernels.
If either of my readers has taken on genealogy project, do drop me a line. Tell me about your efforts — what mistakes you’ve make, what successes you’ve had. I’d love to hear about them.