Ancestor Obsessions

When I have a few free hours, and I sit down at the computer, I find myself being obsessed with finding information about my ancestors.  Sure, I have the usual names and dates born, dates died, but now I want more ....  like stories.  Finding out they did something interesting.   Mentions in a newspaper or article of some time.    I found one who was the President of the town's bank in 1919.   I found two different ancestors who have a patent.   And a bit of military folks as well.     And yet, I still want to find more!  

Found on Google:  Such deep obsession with ancestry (“progonoplexia”) is by no means a distinctly modern fad. Indeed, it goes back thousands of years to Hesiod’s Theogony and the Bible. Nor is it a peculiarly Western phenomenon, as evident from various forms of ancestor worship all over the world.  Over the past several decades, the range of Americans exhibiting interest in genealogy, for example, has clearly expanded “from those claiming descent from the Mayflower or from Southern aristocrats, to include the descendants of African slaves and immigrants.”

For instance, if your family has lived in the same village for a thousand years there's no reason to be curious about your heritage. It's all around you. Immigrants came to America to invent new lives for themselves, so a lot of times stories from the old country didn't get passed down to later generations.  And to me, that's a shame.  I want the old stories!

It's much too easy to spend hours researching data.  Good thing summer's here and I can't do much outdoors with Sadie!   I'm going to try and wrangle the hard data and weave in some written word to create a Family Tree story for future generations.

Or just for me.

I can't seem to help myself, I'm obsessed!