{"id":14223,"date":"2022-02-14T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T08:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=14223"},"modified":"2022-03-31T10:36:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T09:36:04","slug":"blogathon-14-22-family-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=14223","title":{"rendered":"Blogathon 14\/22: Family Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the last six months I have been researching the family tree. There are various services to help with this sort of thing. I tried a couple of websites, on free trial, to see how each one worked\/how I got on with them. After dicking around with a few for a couple of weeks (technical term there kids) I eventually went with Find My Past; it was as easy to use as Ancestry and, unlike Ancestry, wasn’t being used by any other immediate member of my family (because you’d want to avoid duplication\/replication, obviously).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven’t done the DNA test, maybe I shall eventually, but for now I’m just concentrating on mapping out the relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been a bunch of real characters in the family. This is my maternal grandfather and some of his trophies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Archie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Bampa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The trouble is (it isn’t really a ‘trouble’) is that with each generation you go back, the branches of the tree quadruple (and sometimes they divide more than that). And that means having to spend more time investigating. Digging through electronic records isn’t a great hardship. Being absolutely certain that the person whose details you’re looking at is the right person though? That’s a bit tricky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m sure there’s a way of being absolutely certain that the Reginald Smith (made up relative) is the right Reginald Smith, but I’ll be snookered if I can eliminate the feeling of doubt. Several times I’ve gone down the wrong avenue (hey, if you’re looking up Peter Jones who was born 130-years ago in North Wales… Well… it’s tricky).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one thing I will say about doing this is you don’t get the flavour of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, you can find your Great Uncle Three Times Removed (I think that’s a thing), and you can find out when and where they were born, and died, and what the census said about their occupation, but the humanity about them is missing. What were they like? What anecdotes could they have told? Or could have been told about them? What were their hobbies? What did they enjoy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to have that information about them. About all of them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last six months I have been researching the family tree. There are various services to help with this sort of thing. I tried<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}