Welcome to the Understanding Backwards Blog – a place for articles about people, places, genealogy and family history. To start I will tell you how my interest in genealogy began and why I am still hooked.
My boyfriend introduced me to genealogy about thirty years ago whilst we were both at university in London. Visits to St Catherine’s House, Somerset House, Graveyards, the Society of Genealogists and a Mormon Research Centre amongst others followed. Obviously these worked as dates – we married six years later and still research together for fun.
The photograph above shows my father as a toddler. On hearing about my new interest he told me various family rumours about builders in London, a suicide in the Thames and how he was related to Rob Roy McGregor. Turns out the rumours were mostly true – there was a builder in London who did drown in the River Lea, probably as a suicide but undetermined by the coroner and Rob Roy turned out to be his 6x great granddad! Research took longer in those days, records were not computerised and often not indexed, so I was pleased to be able to prove his McGregor link for him before he died.
These days technology has made research much easier and it is sometimes possible to travel many years along a family tree in a short space of time. It is important to me to remember that these were people, not just boxes to fill in, and learn about their lives and who they were. This is what makes genealogy / family history so addictive – there is always something new to learn: a new occupation; disease; different area; social history etc. to research alongside the names.
I also love researching in archives, nothing beats the smell and feel of old records and there are still some real gems to be found that have not been digitised and which can give real insight to how your ancestors thought and felt.