You wonder sometimes ‘why you spend time researching your ancestors’. Besides learning who, when and where there can be so much more to learn about them and their lives. It then helps you see where you came from and how you got to where you are now.
Some of the types of tidbits or small treasures of information you might learn about any ancestor include:
Ancestor’s full name could explain where some of the other family given names originated from. It was very common to use the names of other relatives when naming a baby.
The type of occupation (s) an ancestor did for a living. True, many of the jobs once very common and useful and no longer needed in the 21st century. However, when your ancestor in 1880 did that job of lighting the street oil lamps, that was very necessary.
The number of children a family had and to especially find out how many survived to adulthood. It was very rare for all times and era to find all children born survived childhood. My husband’s family going to his great grandfather, had 15 children from the 1850s to 1880s and all 15 children reached adulthood.
Finding out when and where an ancestor originated from, was it a European country, from Canada, or a South American nation – any of which would surely be a fascinating story.
If a female or male ancestor was a widow or widower and remarried later. This was quite common for a male to remarry especially if he had young children and needed a wife to care for the youngsters. You may have never known without doing research that an ancestor had been married early on and was then a widower.
Those ancestors who moved West in America during the 1800s can truly be considered very courageous to leave their homeland in the east and resettle in uncharted lands and come up against harsh conditions and maybe a few Indians here and there.
Then everyone has an ancestor at some point who does the unusual or strange. The person could have gone to join the circus, become an outlaw, go to the back country wilderness by themselves, or any other extraordinary adventure.
These are the types of different tidbits of information about an ancestor that keep us researching. Keep searching, everyone has a unique story, one that needs to be recorded and save for future generations and to give you true purpose in your own quest.
Photos: Ancestor Search, Family Lineage, Family Records, and My Ancestors ‘Did Dat’
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