New Year thoughts.....
2016 is now behind us and thus a whole year consigned to the history books. As I begin this new year with hearty good wishes from all around the world directed to me and my family from people I have never met face to face but whose DNA I share, I wonder if Family Historians are a special breed of people. Are we the people that our closest family don't really bother with; or see as the black sheep or regard as an oddball? Is that why we feel we have to gather generations of people up and hold them tight - my family! Is this why some genealogists refuse to share "their" tree?
Personally, yes I'm the black sheep. I have been for many years since I produced what previous generations would have called "a bastard child". Oh my. It turned my family upside down to be honest. My wonderful open father and my kind, stern, reserved mother were shattered. Shattered by me. Shattered by a grandchild that they never saw. It ruined my relationship with them for ever. It ruined my relationship with my beloved brother for nearly 10 years until we kissed and made up.
Leaping forward a generation, my daughter Claire presented me with the most wonderful gift 18 years ago, my grandson Max, named for my father. He also was born out of wedlock (what a wonderful term) but he was never "a bastard child". He was longed for by his parents (eventually safely married to my mother's great relief), by his grandparents, by his adoring aunts and by his great grandparents. My mother prayed during Claire's difficult pregnancy and birth and rejoiced in our beautiful boy.
How things have changed in that short generational span. Babies born and loved whether their parents are "in a relationship" or not. Very few people look sideways at an unmarried couple with a child these days. Couples have a child, buy a house and get married in the reverse order of the way things were meant to happen a generation back.
Nevertheless, perceived family hurts and slights continue to fester and Family Historians keep gathering more and more family from around the world to hold and become part of. Strangely, some of my genie buddies have family who refuse to allow them access to family photos or DNA tests or documents which would open a whole new side of their family tree. They think those things belong to them only. And it is so sad. Many of my friends have trees on Ancestry.com that are "private" ie they alone can see them and build them and only invited people can access them. They have their reasons for this and they tell me them. I think their reasons suck. "Someone might copy a picture I have up there." Hello? This is my great great grandfather too!
I'm raving now...sorry....but they are so selfish. History belongs to the world, not to a cardboard box under your bed that your children will find after your death and throw in the skip! Let's start the new year sharing. I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
Deborah Watson
Black Sheep and Family Historian
Te Aroha, New Zealand
1 January 2017
© Deborah Watson 2017
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