Random
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Days prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
We often use the image of “going down the rabbit hole” as a metaphor for being so distracted that you can’t perform your normal functions. We usually somewhat ruefully acknowledge that we’ve gone down a rabbit hole — with the accompanying head-shake and “tsk-tsk” — making it sound like a bad thing. But we need to remember – Alice found Wonderland at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Although it was weird and more than a little scary, it was a terrific fantasy land.
After you’ve done genealogy research for a while, you are fully aware of the perils of rabbit holes. They take you off in random directions that become increasingly distant from what you started out searching for. They frequently take you somewhere that is more fun than what you’re actually attempting to do. That’s why they’re so attractive.
I have found that rabbit holes sometimes have unanticipated benefits. Here are a few examples of this.
I found my great-grandmother in the 1900 census when I was looking for the names of her sister’s children. My great-grandmother was visiting her sister when the census was taken, so she was temporarily in Kansas even though every other record I had for her showed her entire life took place in Illinois.
On a recent genealogy research trip to England, my husband and I decided to visit a village that was not on our original itinerary. We discovered that the English ancestor we share (we are 10th cousins) was burned at the stake for religious heresy in the 1550s. We didn’t know he existed until we walked into the church.
On the same trip, we visited an abandoned and ruined church in Kent, just because we thought it sounded interesting. We knew my 10th great-grandfather was the rector there in the early 17th century, but so far as we knew, there was no evidence of his existence in the church. We found a small grave marker (under some overgrown weeds and almost hidden by a later grave) with his name etched on it.
While visiting a church associated with one ancestor, we found a wall plaque honoring an ancestor we didn’t know had been involved with the church.
The librarian at a genealogy library in Illinois I visited in 2018 was a distant cousin. I didn’t know he existed until he reacted when I mentioned that I was researching the “Ellefritz” surname. It is the birth name of my maternal grandmother. It was also his last name. His grandfather was her first cousin.
I could go on. I have become so accustomed to finding unexpected things while I’m researching that I’m disappointed when I don’t find something out of the ordinary.
Rabbit holes are great. Randomness is often stimulating even if it’s not immediately productive. Rabbit holes are the root of creativity. If you don’t let your imagination run wild occasionally and lead you in unplanned directions, you’ll miss out on lots of interesting experiences.
😎