It started out small…
This evening my genealogy project reached thirty-two thousand names.
I think that writing it out in long form, in the same manner as when I write a personal cheque, is necessary. This project started a long time ago, in terms of the individuals that are catalogued for posterity.
When my dataset first reached one hundred individuals, I was impressed. Now, it’s just a figure that marks my progress, and by this time next year, the number will have increased, but I won’t hazard any guess as to how large that will be.
The study of genealogy began for me as a young child, when I first sorted out that there were other people in the world beyond my mother and father. Some were relatives, others were not. Some were neighbours, others were not. And so on. Then with the birth of my first child, close to twenty years ago, and with a computer and a copy of dBase II and some code found on a BBS down in the States, my effort took a serious tack.
Let’s face it, once I got my “own” family catalogued, I made a decision to develop a more open-ended strategy. Now I subscribe to the “six degrees” which guarantees that someday I’ll find out how I’m related to you. If I haven’t added you, it’s just because this is still a study in progress… your turn will come. Unless you are from another galaxy, but we won’t go there either.
Still, thirty-two thousand people is a respectable number; large enough to have a small town if we could overcome the time-space continuum.
