Exploring the heart and soul of genealogical research

 Over the past 40 years or so, I have been confronted by the dichotomy of how genealogical research is actually done and how it is represented in the popular media and by those who know little or nothing about genealogical research. Here are some quotes from a recent spate of website titles that illustrate one pole of the dichotomy. 

Genealogy Made Easy: 17 Ideas under 20 Minutes

Family History Activities That Are Easy and Exciting

5 Fun Activities to inspire Children to Love Family History

The Top Things that Make Genealogy a Fun, Fascinating Hobby

Of course, "fun" is an overworked promotional tag that connotes transient pleasure. Here is the definition of fun from the Oxford English Dictionary as quoted by Wikipedia. 

"Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment" See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun#:~:text=Fun%20is%20defined%20by%20the,joviality%20or%20merrymaking%3B%20entertainment%22.

If this is the definition of fun, there is nothing fun about doing genealogical research. I would also submit that there is also nothing easy about doing genealogical research. Attempts to portray genealogical research and genealogy as fun and easy denigrate the entire endeavor. The effort to dumb down genealogical research to this level is a disservice to those who spend their lives trying to learn all that is necessary to do adequate genealogical research. 

Genealogy has a history of being sidelined by "historians" primarily because influential people (royalty and nobility) aspired to impressive ancestry. If you were going to rule by divine right as a king, you needed to have a pedigree to support your divinity. Kings and queens rule by imposing the idea that they are entitled to rule simply because they happen to be born to someone who was already a king or queen or at least had a pedigree that went back to divinity even if there were no validly supportable historical facts to support such a claim. Hence the Spanish saying that someone "lies like a genealogist." 

So how does one become a genealogist? Well, genealogy requires a knowledge of at least geography, history, languages, culture, and today, technology and genetic science. It also helps to have a knowledge of local, national, and international law and economics. Although the prejudice of "real historians" has mostly frozen genealogy out of university and college curriculum, it is offered as a four-year degree and from some institutions as an advanced degree program. Those who begin to study genealogy in a degree program, very soon realize how difficult their choice will become. 

One of the things that comes to my mind when I hear the words easy and fun used to describe genealogy is summed up with the following quotes adapted from those above:

Legal representation Made Easy: 17 Ideas under 20 Minutes
Ideas for Representing Clients in Court That Are Easy and Exciting
5 Fun Activities to inspire Children to Love Becoming a Lawyer
The Top Things that Make Being a Lawyer a Fun, Fascinating Hobby

Learning about genealogy, for me, turned out to be harder than law school and harder than being in the Army. I like genealogy because it is very difficult and challenging. Not everything that is difficult and challenging needs to be fun.  What do you tell your little children who have been brought up on the idea that genealogy is fun and easy when they find out that they can't read cursive? How do you tell your children that genealogy is easy and fun if you can't read Kurrentschrift?

All this written, for me genealogy is rewarding. It is also fulfilling. Finding out about my ancestors and their challenges changed my life and it will change yours. I like mysteries and doing genealogical research is like solving a series of mysteries. Genealogy takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort. Not everyone, especially almost all children, is willing to take the time necessary to do genealogical research into original historical records. 

I do appreciate the new technologies that allow us fast access to records that were impossible to access a few years ago but technology is a tool not an end in itself. If you have a broad technological background and can use computers and other devices, you are able to get involved with genealogical research today much faster than those without those skills. If you must learn geography, history, languages, culture, and today, technology and genetic science along with genealogical methodology, even with your technological background, you may be overwhelmed with the complexity of the task. 

We need lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, technologists, and many other highly skilled people and we don't need to try and sell these complex pursuits as easy or fun. Why then do we think that we can all do genealogy simply because we label it fun and easy? Granted, copying down the names of your parents and perhaps your grandparents on a family tree program could be easy, but when you need to identify someone, you do not already know, the difficulty becomes readily apparent. What do you do about learning genealogy if your ancestors came from Scandinavia or Germany? 

I have dedicated a huge part of my life, with my heart and soul, to learning about genealogy and I am just now beginning to scratch the surface of what I still need to learn. I do my best to teach people how to do genealogical research, but I do not talk about fun or easy. Easy is not a word that can be used to describe genealogy without departing from reality.