Family & History

Family History. Family & History. There are two parts to the work we do as we hunt for our ancestors. We want to find our family- their birth dates, death dates, locations of both events, family members and all that. But we also want to learn about them. 
We want to know their history.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to inherit or have access to the personal items of family members that are long past (or perhaps a distant family member does have access to those items and is willing to share with us). 
When my maternal grandfather passed away my family was left his navy footlocker with uniform, old photos and other personal items. It's been fantastic to look through!
However, it's rare to magically and suddenly inherit a perfect box full of all the information we need. Old photographs, letters, and pieces of their life's journey along with a handwritten autobiography informing us of all the amazing details we crave. Wouldn't that be amazing though? 
Instead what we DO have are contextual clues, and history. By matching up the years that our ancestors were alive to what we know about history can tell us a lot without ever finding that coveted diary. 
What can we know about our ancestors?
We can know who the President, King or Queen was during their life.
We can know what music was popular during their life. 
We can look up fashion and see what kinds of clothes our ancestors were wearing.
We can see what wars were being fought during their lifetime.
We can see what plays, and books were being read and discussed during their lives.
We can see what kinds of jobs most people were going into in the adult years of their lives.
This information we gather can help us better understand who our ancestors were and what they went through even when we lack the personal stories.
Being able to find personal and exact information is always really exciting but piecing together the events of history and discovering how they line up to our ancestors lives can fill in a lot of the blanks.
A few years ago I got out a long piece of butcher paper (I had purchased the roll of paper from Ikea) and drew a timeline on it. Using a ruler I measured a quarter inch for each year starting in 1550 CE. I then wrote in major events from that year until the current time. It included wars, monarchs, eventually US Presidents, terms, etc. plus some events I really love, for example Shakespeare's birth and death dates and the publishing dates of favorite books such as "The Great Gatsby", and the year "Maple Leaf Rag" was the number one song in the USA. It was a bit of a project but totally worth it. I initially made the timeline to help with a school assignment in a history class but I kept it. When I got started into family history I found that I was really glad I had made the timeline because I'm able to occasionally roll it out to compare the years of ancestors. 
I found this especially helpful because knowing a specific ancestors' birth and death years I can see that they were a child during the War of 1812, and was a young adult during the Great Awakening. Then their formative adults years the witnessed the presidency of Andrew Jackson and all the politics that went along with it. With all these details it's fascinating to think about the kind of person that my ancestors could have been. 
If making a timeline of your own sounds exciting (and it really was a lot of fun to put together) I can post some of the dates I included on my own timeline. 
Well, what does this all mean? What this means is that family history is completely and totally do-able! The information is at our fingertips and readily available! We can hunt and we can find!
With minimal starting information, passion and enthusiasm we can be successful in working on our family history. Both parts of it- the family AND the history parts. 
Good luck Hunters and Huntresses!