Family Roots

Many things have contributed to the rise in interest in genealogy in recent years. The spread of higher education, greater wealth in the middle class, longer lives and freedom from major war have all probably played a part. And while those luxuries are not available everywhere, certainly the western world has enjoyed the bulk of these.

Moreover, the interest in family history is a response to greater complexity in life and to the speed of change.

Over the last several decades the great institutions that previously provided a sense of continuity - the churches, the state institutions, the universities - have themselves become victims of change. At a time of rapidly expanding frontiers, the domestic family becomes more important in explaining who we are and where we fit.

Pater Familias

The McClellans    The Aldworths    The Northcotts    The Floods    The Jeffreys    The Goulds    The Moons    The Budgetts    The Jones'    The Cooks    The Harris'    The Erskines    The Scotts    The McCauslands    The McKenzies    The Thompsons    The Simpsons

Mater familias

The Reids    The Johnstons    The Buchannans    The McFaddens    The Hustons    The Harrisons    The Merryweathers    The Hammonds    The Blaineys    The Truemans    The Keelers    The Lockes    The Philips'    The Leslies    The Beatties

About this website

This is not a full blown family tree for myself or my family. There are many many web sites out there now that offer excellent software and include a lot more functionality that I am capable of doing here. In fact, I am registered on one of them.

This site is intended to be something a little bit different than those other sites in that I hope to build profiles of some of the people in the family tree one by one.

For those that stumble across this website in the course of their own investigations, I will try and maintain an up to date copy of my family's GED file (a standard data file format for those doing genealogy) and I encourage you to get in touch with me if you feel our histories cross paths.


Download GEDCOM
[By request only]

About my research methods

 

I have no proper training in genealogical research, nor am I (I will admit) the best when it comes to ensuring that I properly document my sources. This probably makes me the worst sort of person to those dedicated souls who take nothing for granted unless they are holding a copy of the original paperwork in their hands, be it an immigration record, census sheet, marriage licence, death certificate and so on.

That said, I am in the habit of questioning (repeatedly) any connection that I come across and have on occassion rejected connections to other possible family branches because the dates, times, or places just didn't match up.

However... I do love the thrill of discovery and most of my time is devoted to tracking down small leads and following up on hunches. In doing this, I have managed to reconnect with several branches of my family whom are still thriving today and whom I would never have known otherwise.

It is staggering just how quickly you can discover that your family extends halfway around the world, and how that spread happened in just a few short generations. It's equally amazing how quickly people who grew up in the same household as brothers and sisters, can see their grandchildren become strangers.