Everyone Is Welcome

Everyone is welcome.

It doesn’t matter what your ability level is, what your background is, what language you speak, or how much you already know about genealogy.

Maybe you don’t even know what genealogy is yet.  Maybe you don’t know who your parents are.  Or maybe someone in your family has already researched your ancestry all the way back to Robert the Bruce.

It doesn’t matter where you’re starting.

If you want to learn more about your family, you’re welcome here.

You have the right to learn how to research your own family.  My goal is to help you learn how to do that for yourself, to answer the questions I can along the way, and to give you the tools you need to keep going.

You don’t have to arrive here already knowing how to do genealogy.

You just have to want to learn.

Why This Matters to Me

When I first thought about why it’s so important to me that genealogy be open to everyone, I wasn’t sure I had an answer.

Then I thought about when I started genealogy in 1988.  I was 14 years old, and at the time, genealogy was generally seen as something older people did.  People thought it was nice that I was interested, but they didn’t seem to expect me to learn very much.  It wasn’t because of anything I had done.  I was simply too young.

Years later, when I was about 22, I was asked to teach genealogy to a group of adults at church.  I was excited because I had never really been asked to teach genealogy before.

One of the men there kept questioning whether I actually knew what I was talking about.  It made me second-guess myself and wonder whether I really knew enough to be teaching anyone.

Then people started asking specific genealogy questions.

I knew the answers.

That experience helped me realize that I did know what I was talking about.  But it didn’t stop people from telling me I was too young.

I’ve heard some version of “You’re too young” throughout most of my life.  For a long time, I felt like I was waiting to become old enough that people would finally stop saying it.  Even now, I sometimes hear, “You’re too young to have that much experience.”

After spending so much of my life being told I was too young, I don’t want someone else to feel that they are too young, too old, not smart enough, or somehow don’t belong.

If you have the desire to learn about genealogy, I believe you should have the opportunity to learn it.

That’s why it matters so much to me that everyone is welcome.

You Don’t Have to Fit the Genealogist Stereotype

Nobody should feel embarrassed or excluded just because they have a passion that other people don’t understand.

I’ve spent nearly forty years having people ask me, “What is genealogy?” When I explain it, I’ll sometimes get a response like, “You mean you actually like spending time in musty old libraries with musty old books?”

Absolutely.

But it took me a long time to be able to say that confidently.  For years, I was made fun of enough that genealogy became almost a secret passion of mine.  I loved it, but I wasn’t always comfortable admitting just how much I loved it.

And it wasn’t only genealogy.

I love cemeteries.  I don’t think they’re scary.  I think they’re wonderful places for genealogy and history.

When my oldest son was little, we lived in a flat—what Americans would call a condo—so we didn’t have a garden.  At Easter, we would color eggs, and I would put candy and coins into little plastic eggs.  Then we’d pack a small picnic and go to a cemetery just down the street, where I would hide the eggs for him to find.

He grew up thinking it was perfectly normal to spend time in a cemetery.

Once, I told someone about our cemetery Easter egg hunts because, to me, it was a fun story about something my son and I had enjoyed together.  Their reaction was very different.  They thought I was a complete loony tune.  They couldn’t believe I had taken my two-year-old son to a cemetery for an Easter egg hunt.

For a while, their reaction actually made me question myself.  Had I done something wrong?  Was I a horrible mother for taking him there?

Eventually, I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with what we had done.  It was simply different from what that person was used to.

And it’s okay to be different.

It’s okay to like musty old books and libraries full of them.  It’s okay to enjoy spending an afternoon walking through cemeteries.  It’s okay to get completely lost in the documents you find while working on a research project.

If you’re one of those people, you’re welcome here.

You don’t have to hide the fact that you love genealogy just because someone else doesn’t understand why you love it.

Wanting to Learn Is Enough

What do I wish every genealogy student understood before taking a class from me?

That you don’t have to want to become a professional genealogist to have a place here.

Maybe you want to research your family for generations and document every person you can find.  Maybe you want to write down your family stories and traditions.  Maybe you simply want to learn a little more about the people you came from.

All of those are valid reasons to learn genealogy.

You also don’t have to be the best researcher in the room.  Research and genealogy come more easily to some people than others.  Some people learn quickly, while others need more time and practice.

None of that determines whether you belong.

It doesn’t matter if you can remember every ancestor’s name or if you’re struggling to remember your own grandparents.  It doesn’t matter if you know every record available in a particular location or don’t even know what records you should be looking for yet.

You don’t have to prove that you’re smart enough, experienced enough, young enough, old enough, or talented enough to research your own family.

This is your family.  You have the right to learn about it.

If your goal is to learn about your own family, that’s great.  If you eventually want to become a professional genealogist, that’s great, too.

The only qualification you need to start learning genealogy is the desire to learn.

That’s enough.

It’s Also Okay If Genealogy Isn’t for You

Everyone is welcome to learn genealogy. But that doesn’t mean everyone has to want to.

Some people simply aren’t interested in genealogy or history, and that’s okay.  There are plenty of things other people love that I don’t particularly enjoy.

My children, for example, love playing video games.  I’ve tried some of the games they enjoy, and most of them just aren’t for me.  That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with video games.  I simply don’t enjoy them.

Genealogy can be the same way.

For years, I tried to get my younger brother interested in genealogy.  I would take him with me to the genealogical library and teach him how to research.  He came with me regularly, and I honestly thought he enjoyed it.

Eventually, I discovered that he didn’t enjoy genealogy at all.

He came because he loved me.

He was willing to spend hours at the genealogical library looking through records he didn’t particularly care about because it was something I loved, and he wanted to spend that time with me.

When I realized that, I was touched by how much of his time he had given me.  But I also stopped trying to make him love genealogy.

It wasn’t his passion.  It was mine.

There may be people who choose to learn genealogy because someone they love wants to share it with them.  That’s a perfectly valid reason to participate.  Something doesn’t have to be your passion for you to enjoy sharing it with someone who matters to you.

But I don’t want “everyone is welcome” to become “everyone needs to be convinced.”

If genealogy interests you, you’re welcome.

If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too.

What If You Want to Do Genealogy but Think You Can’t?

Wanting to learn genealogy and believing you can do it aren’t always the same thing.

Maybe something about your circumstances, your experience, your research skills, or the amount of time you have makes you wonder whether genealogy is really something you can do.

Those concerns are real.  But they don’t necessarily mean genealogy isn’t for you.

I Don’t Know My Biological Family

What if you want to learn about your family, but you don’t know who your biological parents are?

Maybe you were adopted.  Maybe you know very little about one or both of your parents.  Maybe the records you need aren’t currently available to you.  Whatever the circumstances, it can feel like you’ve reached a brick wall before you’ve even started.

Your research may be more difficult than someone else’s.  It may take longer.  You may have to request records, wait for information, use DNA, or explore other avenues of research.  And there may be questions you simply can’t answer right now.

But a difficult starting point doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn how to research.

You can still learn the process.  You can learn how to work with the information you do have, how to evaluate evidence, how to document what you find, and how to recognize possible next steps.

You may also decide that there are other parts of your family you want to research.  For someone who was adopted, that might include an adoptive family as well as a biological family.  Both can be meaningful parts of your family story.

I never like to say “never” in genealogy because genealogy has a way of proving us wrong.  Information that isn’t available today may become available later.  A question you can’t answer now may become one you can answer in the future.

You may have to be patient.  You may encounter brick walls sooner than someone else.  Your path may look different.

But different doesn’t mean you don’t belong here.

I’m a Complete Beginner

What if you’re a complete beginner?  You don’t know anything about genealogy yet. You don’t even know what you don’t know.

That’s okay.

If you’re a beginner, you’re in the right place.  Genealogy is something you can learn step by step, and you don’t have to understand the entire process before you begin.

The first thing you’ll do is figure out what you already know.  From there, you can learn what questions to ask, what evidence you have, and what your next step should be.

Everyone has to start somewhere.

Being a beginner simply means this is where you start.

I’m Not Good at Research

What if you don’t think you’re good at research?

That’s okay, too.

Research is a skill, and it can be learned.  If you’re just starting out, you also haven’t had years to develop bad research habits.  You can start by learning good ones.

You can learn the process step by step.  As you practice those steps, you’ll gain experience.  Things that seem difficult at first will become more familiar, and over time, you’ll become a better researcher.

Will you become the best researcher in the world?  Maybe not.  None of us can promise that.

But you don’t have to be the best.

You just have to be willing to learn.

I Don’t Have Enough Time

One of the reasons I hear most often for not doing genealogy is, “I don’t have enough time.”

That’s understandable.  Genealogy has a reputation for being time-consuming—and sometimes it is.  One reason is that research can pull you down a rabbit hole.  You start looking for one thing, find something else, follow that clue, and suddenly far more time has passed than you realized.

I learned that lesson when my oldest son was about a year and a half.

I was doing genealogy on the computer while he played with his toys in the same room.  He was an incredibly easygoing little boy and was perfectly happy playing by himself.

At some point, he came over and told me he was hungry.

“Okay, just a minute,” I told him.

He wandered off and went back to playing.

A little while later, he came back. “I’m hungry.”

“Just one more minute.”

Apparently, we repeated some version of this several times, although I didn’t realize it at the time.  Finally, he came back again, and when I told him, “Just a minute,” my normally placid little boy completely melted down.

I was shocked.  He almost never behaved that way.

Then I looked at the clock.

I had been telling him “just a minute” for three hours.

In my mind, I had been doing genealogy for about 15 minutes.

That experience changed the way I researched.  I started setting a timer.  If I had 30 minutes for genealogy, I set it for 30 minutes.  If I had an hour, I set it for an hour.  When the timer went off, I stopped.

But I quickly discovered something else: stopping only works if you know how to pick up where you left off.

I had to learn to document my research as I went so that when my timer went off, I could stop without losing my place.  The next time I had 30 minutes, I didn’t have to spend those 30 minutes figuring out what I had already done.

That’s one of the reasons documentation is such an important part of the research process.  Genealogy doesn’t have to consume your entire afternoon.  You can work on it in smaller amounts of time if you develop a system that allows you to stop and start again.

There’s another version of “I don’t have enough time” that I hear, too.

Some people aren’t worried about how long a research session will take.  They’re worried that it will take years before they know enough to accomplish anything.

When I started genealogy, learning really could take a long time.  Many of the resources we have today weren’t available.  You often had to go somewhere—a library, archive, or other repository—to find records and learn how to use them.

That’s no longer the only way to learn.

Today, we have access to tools, records, and educational resources that can help us learn much more quickly.  You will still gain knowledge and experience over time.  Forty years of experience can’t be compressed into six months.

But you don’t need forty years of experience before you can begin finding answers.

You can learn the process step by step, begin using it, and continue getting better as you go.

So if you don’t have endless hours for genealogy, that’s okay.

Start with the time you have.

Start Where You Are

Maybe you want to start genealogy but you’re nervous about it.

Maybe you don’t think you’ll find anything.  Maybe you’re worried about what you might find.  Or maybe the question you want to answer feels so big that you don’t know where to begin.

You don’t have to answer the big question first.

Start with what you know.

Write down the things you remember and the things you’ve been told about your family.  Think about your parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, great-grandparents, and other relatives.  You don’t have to know whether every piece of information is correct yet.  Right now, you’re establishing your starting point.

Then think about what you want to know.

Sometimes the question you really want to answer isn’t one you’re ready to tackle yet.  That’s okay.  Put a pin in it.  You aren’t giving up on the question.  You’re simply recognizing that you may need to answer some smaller questions first.

That’s part of becoming a confident researcher.

A confident genealogist isn’t someone who knows everything.  It’s someone who can recognize, “I don’t have enough information to answer that yet.  What do I know?  What can I work on next?”

You start with what you know.  You identify what you want to know.  Then you take the next step.

You don’t have to see the entire road before you begin.

You just need to know where you’re starting from.

What Genealogy Can Give You

I do genealogy because I love it.  But I think a large part of why I love it is because I love my family—including the people I’ve only gotten to know through genealogy.

I love knowing where I came from.  I love feeling connected to the people who came before me.  I don’t know everything about every one of my ancestors, and there are things about some of them I may never know.  But every piece of information I find helps me understand my family a little better.

Sometimes it even helps me understand the people I already know.

I’ve learned about ancestors and recognized pieces of my mother or my grandmother in them.  I’ve discovered characteristics that seemed familiar and thought, “That’s like Mom,” or “That’s like Grandma.”  In some cases, learning about earlier generations helped me understand my own family members in ways I hadn’t before.

And I personally believe that when you get to know your family, you get to know yourself.

Genealogy can introduce you to hardworking people, adventurers who left one country to begin again in another, people who established communities, people who devoted themselves to service or religion, and people whose lives took completely unexpected turns.

You’ll probably find a few oddballs, too.

Every family has them.

You won’t necessarily be proud of everything every person in your family did.  That’s not the point.  You’re learning about real people, and real people are complicated.

But somewhere in those stories, you may recognize pieces of your family—and perhaps pieces of yourself.

So if you’re nervous about starting genealogy, think about the people you have the opportunity to meet along the way.

You may learn more about your parents, your grandparents, and generations of people you’ve never met.

And while you’re getting to know them, you may get to know yourself a little better, too.

If You Want to Learn, You’re Welcome

If you want to learn genealogy, you’re welcome here.

You don’t have to know how to research yet.  You don’t have to know where to begin.  You don’t have to learn as quickly as someone else or have the same goals they do.

That’s what we’re here for.

You’ll learn the process step by step.  If you need to repeat a step until you’re comfortable with it, that’s okay.  If you get stuck, you’ll have tools to help you figure out what comes next.  And as you gain experience, you’ll become more confident in your ability to research your own family.

Genealogy doesn’t have to be your passion.  But if it is—or if you simply want to give it a try—you don’t have to do it alone.

RootsSphere is a community of people who want to learn about their families and learn how to research them well.  We can learn from one another, support one another, and keep moving forward together.

So if you want to learn, come as you are.

You’re welcome here.