Why and when did you start on family history? (General)

by rookancestrybest , United Kingdom, Friday, January 30, 2009, 13:00 (5848 days ago) @ poytheboy

I am slightly younger than your core group and I'm sorry I didn't spot the survey. I'm just over 50 and in England and female.
My mother always used to talk about her family history (most of which was handed down orally though there's some written and photographic documentation too as well as a few ornaments etc.) Her knowledge of her part of the family which came from the Forest of Dean and South Wales was extensive and this was the branch of the family about which she knew most. I feel sad that she never wrote it down as now she's died I am trying to piece things together. I am also sad because I think the oral history will go once I have died along with the knowledge of who everyone was. Though I have sent some of it on to relatives abroad in Australia. The sad thing is she would have loved to know what I have found out but I think she would also have explained some things I have yet to fathom (e.g. I still haven't established how the Morgans were related to my family apart from remembering that my mother said they were "cousins" but in my family this term is used to describe more distant relatives than first cousins. I haven't yet discovered who the branch of the family were who lived in North Devon and speculate that perhaps tin mines might be the connection?!!! It was shortly after her death that I started to put my family history on a database and to write things down. Your website has been of great help to me as has the Mormons' Family Search.org. But though I started with the Forest of Dean people I have also researched other branches of my mother's and my father's families and found out the most amazing things. Not least that I can trace ancesters to almost everywhere in Britain and to 23 countries. But I know no other website which gives as good a source of local materials on family history as yours does. From doing the family history I feel part of a wider picture and linked much more closely to a wider group of communities in Britain and abroad. I'm even considering going on holiday to different family history places to research them further.
I think the fact that the Forest of Dean family moved away and went to live in Yorkshire might have been something they regretted as they spoke of the Forest of Dean as a wonderful place. We even have Coleford mentioned on a grave here in South Yorkshire as the place of birth and origin of the family. Coleford was spoken of with great affection, so much so that it seemed almost like a mythical place or an ideal world, a land of milk and honey where everything was perfect!!!! When I was 16 (the weekend before my O level results were available) she and I visited Coleford, the Forest and the Speech House as well as Monmouth for the first time for a long weekend and my mother was quite emotional when she actually saw the place where her grandparents had come from. We subsequently went back a couple more times exploring the place further. My mother used to be proud to say her family referred to themselves as "True Foresters", were on the side of King Charles in the Civil War and that many of her family could speak Welsh even though they came from the border between Wales and England. By some strange twist of fate I have a colleage who comes from the Forest of Dean who attended my mother's funeral and I feel that this linked her back to the place which her family felt they really belonged to. My mother spoke to her a time or two (before she died), on the telephone because she wanted to hear her talk to know what her grandparents' accent would have sounded like!
So now family history is rather an obsession for me I have at least 1200 people on my database and a far better knowledge of who I am and where I came from.