Bone and Flesh

I don’t want to be an archaeologist anymore.  I want to be a resurrectionist.  I’ve spent the last three years believing that I’ve been digging up bodies of ancestors through the practice of genealogy.  The truth is that I’ve only been digging up lifeless, fleshless “bones”.

My 88 year old grand uncle, a non-genealogist, made me painfully aware of this during our telephone conversation this week.  He told me that his daughter-in-law had been doing genealogy for the Dell family recently, and that she had been telling him the names of our ancestors.  This new and exciting family information was interesting to him, but what he really wanted to know was how his mother and father met.  His father (Frank Charles Dell, my great grandfather), was born in Lambeth, and his mother (Lillie Louisa Jane Davies) was born in Margate.  Margate is about 250 miles east of Lambeth.  How then did Frank and Lillie meet?

I felt a number of things when he asked me this question.  First, I felt embarrassment.  Why had I never considered the question before?  Am I not the family genealogist?  Then I felt curiosity.  Uncle B., that is a damn good question!  So I consulted my research (a marriage certificate) to try and answer it:  Frank married Lillie July 26^th 1919 at the register office in Margate, Kent.  At the time, he was a bachelor of 28 years and was working as a tally clerk.  Lillie was a spinster of 20, and worked as a café waitress.  Their fathers were Frank George Dell, a pianoforte maker, and George James Davies a coach builder.

 

Bones can't tell you that Frank loved to wear a Trilby and Lillie kept mints in the pocket of her apron.

The answer to uncle B.’s question isn’t there, is it?  I’ve spent three years digging up my family like an archaeologist and all I have are some lifeless, fleshless facts – names, dates and places.  I have made a “rookie’ genealogical mistake.  More than this, many of us including myself have made this great and terrible life-mistake:  we never bothered to ask.

Uncle B. had 53 years in which to ask his father how he met his mother.  I have had 42 years in which to ask how my own parents met, and yet I have never bothered.  I just never bothered.

Do you want to get started in genealogy?  Forget the genealogy websites for a time.  Resist the urge to discover who your fourth great grandfather was.  Talk to your parents, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles.  Get to know them, get to know their lives and their stories.  Learn the oral stories handed down to them from their parents and grandparents. 

Genealogy will only give you the bones of your family, but your living relatives will give you the flesh.

Next week (or two):  Tips for interviewing your family.