Week 4 of #52Ancestors, and the topic is 'Curious'. This is another topic quite open to interpretation - a curious fact, a curious disappearance, a curious family mystery, a curious record. The list is quite wide.
As family historians, we are all curious about our ancestors. It is this curiosity that drives us in our research and motivates us to try to break down those frustrating brick walls we all encounter from time to time.
As a child I first became curious about my family history from hearing my parents' stories about their young lives. With an age gap of 16 years between them, my parents were very much from different generations - my father, born 1926 was a child of the depression and my mother, born 1942 was a child of World War 2. Both had many amusing and sometimes stark stories to tell about their early lives, how they met and married, and life on the outback sheep station I could barely remember.
Both my parents were always open to questions about their families, although often the answer was 'I don't know'. My father in particular knew very little about his family history - when questioned when I was in my teens and getting more interested in formally recording and researching, my father could not even tell me what his mother's maiden name was. It never came up.
While the other members of my immediate family were never interested in research, they were always curious enough to be interested in any unusual facts or new stories I unearthed. This helped keep up my own enthusiasm through my late teens and twenties, when my research was fairly spasmodic and certainly not up to the genealogical standards of today. Today, I am not only curious to learn more about my ancestors, but also always curious about new research methodology and new records becoming available.
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