At what age did you start your research; and what started it all?

Question

I'm just interested, because they say genealogy is an older person's hobby, but I'm sure it's varied. So...

At what age did you first get into genealogy, and what started it all?

I was 22, and it was when I was on Friends Reunited, and saw the icon for Genes Reunited, so thought why not?

Answer 1

Pre-school.  My Mom always told all of us about her ancestors and my Dad's ancestors.  Of course, I did not get much done until recent years due to the internet...By which time I was a senior citizen.

Answer 2

I was about 16 or 17.  My mom's family had been having reunions for over 80 years so they knew a lot about their extended family.  In my dad's family, we only had reunions of my dad's siblings.  Every now and then we would meet people my father later said was related to us.

The trigger event was when my father said we were related to a Dr. in our town and his children were something like 5th cousins to us (we saw them all the time at different events).  This doctor was descended from a woman everybody called "Pickle."  I got interested mostly because I wanted to know what kind of family would nickname someone "Pickle"!

Now, over a thousand family members later (just on my dad's side; my mom's side has about a dozen serious researchers so I haven't done anything with that), people with nicknames like "Big Mama" and "Bud Cal" and "Dickie-Watt" are pretty much the norm in our family.  I've also found three women with the same surname who are all my ancestors but far removed from each other in time.  I've also found a connection between my parents in 1630 New Amsterdam (both had ancestors who were consultants to Peter Stuyvesant).  I keep coming back to it for coincidences like that.

Answer 3

Mid 30s.  My husband's grandmother had a cherished and dilapidated, typed family history from her mother's side, and she passed it on to me, with the request that I would update it.  I soon found that you can never completely 'update' a family (ie coming down to all living persons), because that is always in fluctuation.  I found myself looking at the content, and working to locate the original records to confirm what there already was, and expand on that.

There are people that would not agree with me.. but I think I was fortunate to start, at a time when the internet was not around, thus, I HAD TO work with alternate means to find records.  I can compare what I found (proof wise) to what I know is out there now, and see that people limit themselves by belief that its all online.  I hope to emphasize that there IS an answer to many problems, by looking outside the box.

Answer 4

Hello Lyra Isnt it great to learn about ones ancestors?! My family learned that our great aunts knew friends in town were cousins.  Social Studies class gave us incentive.  We got family tree form for relatives to fill out.  Got out those photo albums & put names & info about pic on them while you can. So I was 14-ish.

Answer 5

I started working on family history in my mid-20s during the late 1970s, spurred on by conversations with my paternal grandmother and my father's oldest brother.  One of my maternal uncles had already researched my mother's family history for years, so I more or less left her side of the family alone.

At that point in time, after contacting distant relatives, US Censuses on microfilm were the only research option other than writing county courthouses for marriage and birth records.   By about 1982, I had traced my ancestry back to the early 1800s, merely confirming the facts set forth in several family bibles.

Enter the computer age.  After corresponding with a distant cousin I had met in my university's chat room, I decided to do some research on my own and took out a membership in Ancestry.com two years ago.  Also, within the past year, I have learned the advantages of verifying my "facts" through surfing surname message boards on line.  This works best if the research has some usual names to work with, for example, "Keesee" (a corruption of the French "La Cage") and "McQuerry" (an Americanization of the Scottish "Macquarrie").  However, I have even found additional information on my Great Grandfather Smith.

Answer 6

I was 35, Although I had always wanted to learn about my Family from a very young age, I lost my dad at 19 and my Mother at 34 and just needed to know who I was, I am now 51 still at it and still wanting to know who I am.

Answer 7

I have only just started looking into my past, I am 51 - it was a thing I was going to do with my father; but he died last year, so I have now decided to take up what we were both going to do.  It will be a challenge, as I have no one only my mother to ask questions - all my father's side of the family passed away years ago.

Answer 8

Generally, when you visit places like the National Archives or Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson room which are both heavily involved in genealogy research you will see many more older people than younger ones.

I started in my early 20's actually doing the research, but

in my case, I was raised to be a genealogist.  I remember as a child going with my father to the cemetery on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Where I am from we plant RED GERANIUMS on the graves of all ancestors, not just veterans.  In my twenties and thirties, it was my grandmother and I who planted the flowers in 5 different cemeteries in 2 counties. And on Sunday we had lunch at the community center in the town where she grew up and then attended Memorial Services at the cemetery next to the church she attended as a child.  Memories of those weekends with her make it my favorite holiday.  Also, we had a family reunion when I was a child at the home where my great great grandparents had raised 15 kids!  I've always been cognizant of family history.