Henry Louis Gates' "Finding Your Roots" is, as ever, riveting this season. A key takeaway: as DNA analysis becomes an ever more prevalent and powerful tool of genealogical research, we all need to prepare ourselves for surprising discoveries that may overturn everything we thought we ever knew about our family lines.
It truly is always a matter of mama's baby, but daddy's maybe.
#FamilyHistory #HenryLouisGates
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You can spend years doing research on "your" family, only to discover, as I have done several times, that the family you imagine is your family isn't your family at all. I spent years accumulating filing cabinet drawers full of information about Virginia Lindsey families I thought were my relatives, but which turn out to have no connection to my own family —
#FamilyHistory #HenryLouisGates
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Genealogy is one of those deeply personal things that you have to have an open mind about when you go into it. I was actually once a certified genealogist as a side-gig and got out of it because while I found my own research into my own family endlessly fascinating I found otherwise rational people who I'd known for years would suddenly become unhinged when you told them about their own family if it wasn't exactly what they believed going into it.
@BE Yes, I've found frequently that people want to find what they expect to find as they do family history (or history in general), and can take umbrage when the facts upend their preconceived ideas. I've never quite understood that attitude. Why do history if you want to make history what you believe rather than what facts and documentation tell us happened?