Anyone working in genealogy is regularly asked âHow did you first get involved?â which I translate as âHow the hell did you get into this mess?â
Hereâs the long version of my response.
Forty years ago, I had been living in Italy for four years, teaching English as a foreign language in private language schools and had become deeply Italianised. Italy has everything â food, culture, style, history, landscape, weather ⌠I thought Italians had completely mastered the art of living well. I wanted to be Italian.
But TEFL in a private language school anywhere is not the most fulfilling or lucrative way to earn a living, so I decided to come home to do the Ph.D. which would then enable me to get a university job in Italy.
Back in Ireland (which to my Italianised eyes then seemed to be full of grotesquely badly-dressed people eating grotesquely terrible food but all having a great time), I had to fund myself. A friendâs partner with a degree in history was doing piece-work for the Genealogical Office. Though like everyone else in the country at the time, I thought of professional genealogy as a form of intellectual jarvey-ism, the piece-work side suited perfectly. I could make the rent in a day or two, then switch back to the doctorate.
The friend said his partner wouldnât mind helping me start (without bothering to ask her first, sorry about that Anne), so I turned up at the GO office in the National Library, picked up a research file, wandered out into the Reading Room and fell flat on my intellectual face.
Eventually, I learnt the ropes and discovered to my surprise that I had an aptitude for it, which mainly consisted in having a very high boredom threshold. The amount of research required to make a living escalated steadily until I was completing more than a dozen research files a week, had settled down happily and was beginning to look for ways to climb the genealogical food chain. But thatâs a different story
What about the Ph.D? Big mistake. First, for all my Italianisation, I hadnât realised that itâs impossible to get work in Italian third level education without being part of a well-established mutual back-scratching network. Second, I made a disastrous choice of subject for the Ph.D., the poetry of John Ashbery. Yes, the John Ashbery who died a year ago at the age of ninety. The John Ashbery renowned for his productivity, who published almost thirty books of poetry, most of them after I started my thesis on him. He just outwrote me.
And the short version of my response is that I was cursed in my cradle by an evil fairy.
ha ha đ
Sometimes you have to make the change first then become the change.
Mine is an even longer story. That is for another day.
Mine was a story my father told us many many times!
After I retired and had the time – I got hooked. After 10 years I was able to prove his story.
Now I help my local library raise money- a group of fellow genealogy friends started The Sleuth Group – to do research for folks from town and more! For $25 they get 2 hours of research and a printed report. However, no surprise we get hooked and go way beyond the 2 hours?
It is also an addiction! It is a âhobby â for me and I had forgotten the ârootsâ of my addiction – until I found some research I did 20 years ago! Long before Ancestry, etc. and all the software that only makes you want more!
Ah, but as I recall, after the curse of the evil fairy â and a few brambles and stumbles along the way â everyone woke up and celebrated!
Love your entries.
We are addicted John – because it is so like gambling – intermittent reinforcement. We search, search, search (bet, bet, bet) and zowie! There is the prize we’ve been looking for. So grateful to you and the excellent genealogy work and sharing you do. And yes, I also believe that we are chosen to be the ones in the family to archive, research, pass on their history and stories. We are chosen by the one from the family who was chosen and so on and so on back through time.
Amen!
Who knew? I was in Italy 40 years ago, too, working for a lawyer, equally passionate about Italy, and having a ball. Maybe we passed on the street! I lived in Rome.
Maybe John passed you riding a Vespa, with a Cornetto in one hand and wolf whistled at you!
Ah, it was a good fairy, not an evil one. Think of the many thousands of people, including myself, you have helped thru your work, your books and lectures and website. It is a calling and you have not buried your treasure.
And another Amen to your post VirginiaB.
Thanks for sure! I’m in agreement with everyone!
I share your blog in Australia.
I Teach a group in a Community Centre in Rye Victoria
A destination had many routes, so thankyou!
It would have been a nice major for me but it wasn’t ‘in’ to do genealogy yet.
Ha ha. My story is nowhere near as interesting. My daughter was in 3rd grade and was supposed to present a basic family tree for her class. At that time, I knew the names of 3 of my grandparents and not much more – so we went to the library (this was before the internet). Today, she’s grown up, with a family – including a 22-year-old son – and not a lot of interest in her forebears, but I am still toiling away, day after day, searching for those elusive ancestors.
What a great family history story
As a child I was enchanted by the tales my Grandfather would regale me with about his Father. It seemed my Great Grandfather had led a fascinating and adventurous life. I must admit I thought it was all myths and legends but my Father insisted on the truth of it all. So about 25 years ago, after my Father’s death, I decided to see if I could find any proof. And I was hooked on genealogy without noticing until it was too late.
I landed in genealogy as a way to connect with my elderly parents and an elderly first cousin once removed who happens to be a Catholic Sister 61 years into her vows. Sister Kate had done a load of leg work in the post-Roots 1970s and was thrilled to pass her work to me. They love to talk abut who and what they remember from their own youth and I take mental notes to add to my tree. I return with documents from their grandparent’s life and my findings of what happened to lost great-great uncles and those extra babies and marriages only rumored about when they were sweet young things. You must meet people in their 80s where they are and genealogy is a great way to do this. BTW: All 3 of them DNA tested for me willingly!
I do genealogy for money! I am certain we are descended from the Earl of Somewhere and I am the rightful heir! Where is our castle??
In the 1980s (before the ‘personal computer’) I spent hours scanning the Ontario census reports for the name Tuite (a common name in Ireland but rare in Canada). Eureka! I found my grandfather, Edward, and to my surprise, he had a grandfather named Christopher and a grandmother mother named Margaret, both born in Ireland. My great-aunt provided another bit of family lore with the story that the family managed to ‘get a ship’ around 1795 and left France, stopping in Scotland then Ireland. End of story. In the decades following this discovery, I have not been able to catch the thread that will unravel the mystery. However, the excitement it generated fuelled my enthusiasm for geneaology and I have found other branches of my family extending back to the 5th century. Every new piece of information is like finding buried treasure.