FOR OUR NAMELESS ANCESTORS
A Bridge Across Time
Our Roots Are Like a Hidden Rhizome of Connective Tissue
Interconnective Corridors in the Labyrinth of Time
YOU ARE THE CROWN OF CREATION
DNA Temples of Living Light
Regardless of the reasons, each person seeking to learn about their family history is embarking on a quest. Just like the journeys of pioneer ancestors, such quests may seem almost impossible or never-ending. However, a quest is just an “over-all” goal and like every other journey, proceeds one step at a time.
As with every journey, you will have to set and reach several intermediate goals in succession during this quest. In family history, goals often focus on learning about an ancestor or family. Later in the research process, you will learn how to further break these goals into specific achievable research objectives that will keep you on the path, goal by goal toward achieving your quest.
“Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.”
―Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White
A Bridge Across Time
Our Roots Are Like a Hidden Rhizome of Connective Tissue
Interconnective Corridors in the Labyrinth of Time
YOU ARE THE CROWN OF CREATION
DNA Temples of Living Light
Regardless of the reasons, each person seeking to learn about their family history is embarking on a quest. Just like the journeys of pioneer ancestors, such quests may seem almost impossible or never-ending. However, a quest is just an “over-all” goal and like every other journey, proceeds one step at a time.
As with every journey, you will have to set and reach several intermediate goals in succession during this quest. In family history, goals often focus on learning about an ancestor or family. Later in the research process, you will learn how to further break these goals into specific achievable research objectives that will keep you on the path, goal by goal toward achieving your quest.
“Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.”
―Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White