Digging Through The Past

Family weighs on my mind lately. Not in a bad way you understand. It's good. You see, I've returned to the pursuit of my family's history and flushed a few cousins out of the bushes and reconnected with people I love in the process.

Genealogy can be fun but it can also be frustrating. Think of all the John Smiths in the phone book and then imagine some future curious relative trying to identify which one of them was his or her long lost uncle. Then, of course, there's what I like to call the "Cleopatra Syndrome." The most well researched names and lines are those descended from kings and other people of importance. So it's easy (and fun) to take a few shortcuts, accept someone else's research at face value and declare yourself the 11th descendant of the Thane of Cawdor. After all, it sounds a lot better than being descended from Murray the Floor Scrubber.

Duncan and Christina were wed at Kilchrist Kirk.

One of the most rewarding parts to all this comes from gaining insight into family you've never met. For example, my great great grandparents Duncan Macdonald and Christine Campbell were married on the Isle of Skye in 1825 in a country church--but what a church! Kilchrist Kirk (Christ Church) is now a famous romantic, spooky, weather-torn ruin. Originally built after the Reformation in the early 1500s, it replaced an earlier, medieval Catholic Church on the same grounds. A new church was built in nearby Broadford in 1840 and Kilchrist was apparently abandoned to ruin.

This kind of stuff really gets me going. Dates and place names are all very dry but when you combine them with a picture of a person or a place you're inspired to keep digging and filled with the hope of finding more. What's truly rewarding is when "more" brings new relationships (such as with my newfound cousin Graham and his wife Holly on my father's side) and reinvigorates old relationships (such as with my sisters Susan and Donna, Uncle Dean and Marquis cousins on my mother's side). Genealogy gives you something to talk about together and allows family to bind over the subject of family. Sure, we toss around religion, politics and other hot potatoes from time to time and drive each other crazy but we're always pulled back to earth by what we have in common--like a simple country church.