Aimlessly rooting around
I’ve been a “collector of names” for decades now. I was reared to believe that it was important to know who was related to who; just in case, you know. My father wasn’t much help in all of this, but my mother remains a goldmine of tidbits, covering half of the country and more. Ergo, it’s a genetic trait.
Now, people come and go, but the records continue to surface. This whole internet thing makes it as much fun as fly fishing. You cast a name into the great pond of Google, and sort out the real bites from the fake nibbles and crosscurrents. My interest is very wide, so an evening of fishing, like this evening, goes something like this.
Pick a person (related in some six degrees of separation manner) and cast. Reel in and look for something that helps you identify the species. Pardon if this takes on a bit of a fishy smell, but it isn’t always scientific and it isn’t always fruitful. Some days are just better than others.
Tonight I ended up in Newfoundland, where the records tend to be extremely anecdotal. I guess that any place with as few roads (outports, you know, fishing communities) has a duty to note who married who and when and who showed up and who bought who’s house and …
I’ve pretty much tracked down the ancestors of one of my cousin’s husbands. She only has one, but I have many cousins. English has trouble with composite plural sentences. It may turn out that her husband has a granduncle or a grandcousin that married the distant cousin of another of my uncles, which doesn’t mean anyone is actually related but it fits in with the anecdotal nature. Thank goodness for computerized datasets. I’d hate to have to draw this stuff out with a pencil and two erasers for company.
And that’s why I carry on with this endless rooting. It’s much more distracting than any old crossword or needlepoint or other composite mixup, and I feel like I belong, in a strange sense, to these places like Topsail or Train Loop, even if I haven’t actually got on the bus and gone there.
