Genealogy

Genealogy - defined as 'an account of the descent of a person or family through an ancestral line', or alternatively, 'the investigation of pedigrees as a department of knowledge', is a high faluting description of what, to the rest of us, is known simply as 'tracing the family tree'. Nostalgia, to the fore in recent years, has found a wealth of collectible interests emerging amongst a public ever eager to get hands on anything connected with the past: old postcards, postage stamps, paper ephemera, 195Os and '60s memorabilia - and family trees! It seems that today we are not content to know just how our ancestors lived - and I mean specific ancestors, namely those whose genes, characteristics and hereditary behaviour are the sum result of our very being. We want to know exactly who those people were: where they lived; what they did for a living; whether that story of highwaymen, criminals and corrupt relatives is factual, or a figment of Grandma's over-active imagination.

Today so many people are eager to trace their own family histories that once desolate Public Record Offices are now able to operate a timetable system, for which those who now fill its halls to carry out their own research, must make an appointment to do so. These treasure chests of registers, records, census documents and various other documented pieces of evidence on the lives of those before us, are now little hives of activity, filled with enthusiastic researchers from the moment their doors open. But a day is never enough; a day can sometimes culminate in mountains of useful information destined to provide a large proportion of one's family history; it might instead yield nothing. Perhaps though, one of the very best things about researching your family tree, is the wonderful way it can bring the past to life as you not only read of who your ancestors were, but can also see the exact same things they saw in the course of their lives: churches they attended; street scenes and activities they might have taken for granted; special events; strikes and invaluable insights into yesterday's working environment; shops with staff posing outside, and much, much more.