Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Sometimes I can simply be overwhelmed with research. Which line do I pursue next? How do I focus on the line in hand rather than be distracted by a different line? Often I receive an email or a document which takes me off on the road of research and discovery then I receive another email or contact and that prompts me to perhaps look at that data so that I can answer the email. I then find that I get absorbed into that research that I take sometime before getting back to what I was originally researching. By the time I get back to the original material I have lost my thought process and need to review the data. Does that happen to you or am I just disorganised?

My plan for the last few years has been to get my house in order or to complete, no, start the process of genealogy housekeeping. I am shocking at filing the data back into the files. There are, so a former boss told me filers and pilers and I am a piler; and alas not an organised one!….and I have 25 years of genealogy notes to file. As the films say. I could be some time!

Each conversation with a relative, visit to the record office, note, thought, plan and tree drawn out whilst researching has been processed, file (or piled), stored and perhaps revisited and then stored somewhere in the depth of my study. I dread to think how much paper and ink or pencil lead that is. Of course the fundamental question is do I really need 6 copies of a record? Do I need every note book written since 1986?

Whats more frightening, is that 70% of the current paper & data mountain relates to my maternal genealogy, 10% relates to my Italian ancestry, 5% relates to my husband’s genealogy, 15% relates to my two one name studies and my one place study. I haven’t stopped researching yet, there are many, many more ancestors and records to read and research. Just where will it all end?

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Just what does all this genealogy mean? Over the last 25 days or so I have written about various lines of my ancestry. Along that writing journey I have pondered upon other considerations and questions and like with all genealogy with each answer that we establish we create more questions.

Both my Mum’s parents had family deep within the infrastructure of the South East of England, all within the Counties of Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. Quite literally where the boundaries of those three Counties meet. I always knew that, from the early days of my research. I also knew that several family members married their Cousins and I accepted the fact that rural communities would of mean that men and women from those communities would perhaps meet through a family connection and subsequently marry. Given that so much of ancestry is contained within a small geographical area I was not surprised to see some surnames appearing more than once on my family tree.

What has surprised me is just how much name repetition has occurred. In some cases there has been a proven connection between the genealogical lines and not in others.  Also the amount of family relations marrying has surprised. None so than that of my own Grandparents. A fact that I am fairly sure they did not know in their lifetime and how I wish I could ask them now just what they think of it.

After 20 odd years of researching I still feel  real amazement and a buzz at what I can unearth and just what data has survived the test of time. I am also astounded at the twists and turns of my ancestry, the migration from parts of the South East to the colonials  – Canada and Australia.

All these names that appear in my ancestry are more than that. They are the foundations of my history each with a set of dates as a basic framework with the added details that bring those ancestors to life. Each of those individuals would have experienced every emotion that we experience. The families that migrated would have experienced a grief of missing a relative, migrated to a better life with virtually no hope of returning home. A new life that was hopefully a better life, away from all that was familiar and reassuring to a life of chance, unfamiliar and potentially dangerous.

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