[TalnSG]

Genealogy is a thriving business and hobby for many in the U.S. Maybe because we know that whoever we are, each of us came from some other country at some point; except for a few Native Americans who come from families that never married outside their tribe.

In the 1980’s, my parents and other relatives decided to continue my initial efforts to trace both of my parents history and get as much of it documented as possible. They turned out to be rather good at it. Its best to document as much as you can from the older family members while they are still around to answer questions.

We have taken my matriarchal line from the Texas revolution (1830's), back to Cherokees and Welsh settlers in Alabama in the late 1600’s. But we took my patriarchal line back to a Fergus/Fergis on the Isle of Mann in the 1100’s. Only thing is, we have his daughter’s name and not Fergus’s first name, so we can’t be sure whether he was an Irish or a Scottish Fergus who was occupying the Isle at the time. My gut (or my preference?) tells me it’s Scottish. The two countries seemed to have fought over that piece of land and it changed hands every decade or so for a while.

The biggest problem in our research is the same thing Columbine mentioned – duplicate (or mangled) names. It seems mine is the first generation in a very long time not to have an “Elizabeth”, and some generations had more than one. And it seems familys always have one person who was only remembered by a nickname, not their legal name.

[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Most people get all excited about being connected to royalty or heroes of one sort or another, but sometimes you find things your relatives would prefer were lost to history. I dug up a few “skeletons” had hadn’t been buried too well in the 1970s, and now the internet has provided even more material on a few public events in my patriarchal line. I am far from proud of some of the previous generations, but it explained a few things about family politics and attitudes for me. Even so, if you get more than just the names, there can be some wonderful anecdotes to make the digging worthwhile.[/font]