Digging Up the Past

A few weeks back I saw a link on facebook to a genealogy webpage. A page allowing you to create your own family tree. At first I didn't think much of it but created a profile to see how it worked. So I added myself and started from there and got hooked. Because while adding a few grandparents and then googling a few of the names I suddenly found other people's genealogy trees which included myself or my very close family!! Funny thing is, I have no idea who these people are!

Image borrowed from http://pjm-web-creation.com/

It's a strange satisfaction in learning about my roots, my family's past, to know how and why we are where we are. I find it interesting knowing where my family came from, what they were doing and who they were. When I sat down adding the immediate family to my tree I realised I didn't know anything about my great grandparents, what they did for a living or where they lived.Well, apart from some juicy bits about one of my great grandfathers. The one who packed up and left his family and started a new life in the US.

A second reason I'm interested in knowing more about the family I've talked about here. It would be quite cool we could find another 'lost' family member! The only lead we have to find out anything else would take me on a trip to Rotterdam (Netherland).

At the moment though I'm looking into my father's side of the family. The part which doesn't seem to have been investigated by some unknown relative and published already. The comfort is that I can do that with my own pc at home because much of the information is available online in the Norwegian State Archives as scanned books and documents. Records of births, weddings, funerals etc...

Yesterday I got quite emotional discovering that my great grandmother had lost a baby girl. She was only 7 weeks old! And while looking at the records for deaths during the mid-1900s I realised that it was very common. Of those specific church records the majority of deaths were either babies or young kids. Google has so far failed to dig up the reasons for the high numbers of deaths but I can only assume that health care and nutrition were not of today's standard.

While looking into the past, I can't help thinking about the family researches of the future. They will have a monumental task! Travel is easy now. Couples are composed of different nationalities, often living in a third country. They are married in one place, living in another, the kids are born in different countries so birth certificates are dispersed...

But then again, I can't see facebook disappearing anytime soon so when I'm a great-great grandmother my great-great grandchildren can just dip into the (un)useful info there :)