I don’t claim to be the first or only person who ever formed an interest in genealogy as a child; there are likely thousands of us. But I would venture to say it’s not the norm. I was 11 when it took hold of me, and I know it coincided with our nation’s bicentennial in 1976. Attention on America’s founding was everywhere, and it set me to thinking, not just about our country’s history, but also about my family’s history.

The following year, a miniseries documenting writer Alex Haley’s ancestry exploded on television. I was intrigued by his family’s saga and devoured every episode over an eight-night airing. It was culturally phenomenal. Even today, the final episode holds the record as the second-most-watched series finale in American television history.

Within the next year, a distant cousin wrote a history of a local family, which included my great-grandparents. I was fascinated how, by filling in three subsequent generations, I could link this long line of ancestors to myself. Just as Haley’s Roots had forged the connection between him and his African ancestor Kunta Kinte, this was my story.

When all these “stars” aligned – the bicentennial, Roots, and the locally written family history – I felt the full impact of genealogy for the first time. While I can’t recall a time I didn’t like history, within the context of genealogy, history became more alive and more personal as I began to ponder and discover how my family fit into the grand scheme of things. I realized history was not just about famous people of position like presidents and generals; it also encompassed my forebearers – most of them every day, common folk, but no less important in their own right and within their given times and circumstances.

I also realized my story wasn’t limited to just one family line as had been documented in my cousin’s book; I had hundreds of ancestors on every side of my family just waiting to be discovered. It was a fascinating and exciting prospect, and as I embarked on and committed myself to that discovery, it gradually became an avocation…and an addiction.

Fortunately, my maternal uncle had an early interest in family history as well, and as a youngster, he had asked many questions of his grandparents (my great-grandparents) and documented their answers. His forerunning was a catalyst for my own research.

Soon, as a bonafide genealogy “nerd,” I was spending much of my carefree childhood in libraries, courthouses, and cemeteries. I once declined a family beach vacation so I could stay home and work on family history, and on occasion, when school was cancelled due to snow, and in light of the fact I was not yet old enough to drive, my mother would drop me off at the county courthouse. Packed lunch in hand, I would spend the entire day there, sifting through vital records. Over time, I developed a report with the staff of ladies who worked in the Register of Deeds Office, and I’m sure they wondered what was up with this odd kid who wanted to spend long hours perusing birth, death, and marriage certificates.

Once I was in high school, my love affair with genealogy continued. Early in my freshman year, my mother suspected that the attention I devoted to it was contributing to a few bad grades I earned in math and science, and she threatened to make me shelve my research until those grades improved. At the time, it seemed a grievous prospect, but in hindsight, it makes me chuckle. While most parents threaten to ground their children or take away some privilege like a car, a phone, music, TV, or some social outing, my mother knew that temporarily taking away my genealogical research would result in ultimate impact. Once more, I fully recognize and embrace my unique form of “nerdiness.”

While I chose to pursue what some may consider an older person’s interest, I’m thankful that I started researching my family as a young person, while my grandparents and even a great-grandparent were still alive, and that I was able to sit down and record biographical interviews with most of them. I’m glad not to be in the majority – the people who look back on their childhoods and bemoan not having asked more questions or not having paid more attention to what they, at the time, considered to be boring stories told by their elders.

I, on the other hand, have always enjoyed the company of older people and hearing what they have to say. Of course, many of the ones I first encountered in my childhood have since passed away, and it’s now both strange and sobering to look at a current senior citizen in their 80s and realize I also knew their parents and grandparents. Among the oldest people I ever met and discussed family history with were two females relatives, both born in 1884, a mere 19 years following the Civil War, but now 141 years ago. It’s a time warp that’s a bit hard to wrap my head around.

This contrast between my younger self and the elderly was particularly evident on a couple of occasions. On one of those, as I sat in a doctor’s office waiting room, I encountered a relative who was more than 40 years my senior. Still, she knew little about her father’s side of the family, and I began to fill her in on the subject. We were initially the only people in the waiting room, but as other patients trickled in and began overhearing our conversation, I could sense they found it odd that I, at my age, should be telling an elderly lady who her grandparents and great-grandparents were. As we continued to talk, and as I brought up various names of yore, someone across the way would speak up and inform me they knew that name or were acquainted in the past with that particular person. Overhearers soon began participating in our conversation, and when I was called back to an examination room, they seemed genuinely sad that our “history lesson” had come to a close.

On another occasion, while visiting a local nursing home with my church group, I encountered an elderly lady sitting in a wheelchair in the hallway outside her room. She seemed rather sad and lonely. Although I had never previously met her, when I learned her name, I recognized it as being part of my extended family through my prior research. I also recalled her parents’ names, and when I asked if she was their daughter, she suddenly lit up. I’m sure she never expected a younger person to remember her long-gone parents, and I was glad that it seemed to cheer her.

Having spent long hours documenting the names of relatives, I developed a strange, almost computer-like capacity to recall names – not just first and last but middle names as well. When my mother and sister and I went to a hospital to visit someone and asked for her room number using the name she always went by, we were told they had no such patient. Suddenly, my recall kicked in, and after having correctly produced her full legal name from memory, we were directed to her room. On another occasion, my mother heard me, mid-dream, call out the name of some relative that I only knew from research. Again, I own the fact that I am somewhat of an oddity.

At the age of 19, I wrote and self-published my first family history – a two-volume, 894-page book. When I first began compiling my research, all I had was a manual typewriter, upon which I employed the “hunt and peck” method. Over time, I graduated to a word processor (sort of a glorified electric typewriter), but it wasn’t until my 30s that I had a desktop computer. Despite these upgrades, I still only use three fingers to type, plus my thumb to hit the space bar. Although I took typing in high school, obediently placing both hands in their "home row" positions and using all fingers to type, that lasted only long enough to satisfy course requirements. Afterwards, I reverted to the much faster, three-finger method I had developed and become accustomed to several years before as a child typist.

The internet was another advancement and a game changer for genealogy, and various computer programs were designed to provide researchers like me a way of organizing their data. And what once required lengthy, in-person visits to various institutions to dig through archives became less and less necessary as online records through platforms like Ancestry.com became available. It’s almost shocking to realize the ease of access we have to information nowadays. Whereas I once spent hours searching for pieces of information on microfilm at our local university’s library after driving to town and finding a parking space, I can now look at those same records on a laptop, using a search function to quickly locate a particular piece of information, and all from the comfort of my recliner. I can also research someone’s family tree at a much more rapid pace, typically cranking out a basic, yet well documented, pedigree from scratch within minutes.

When I began working on my own family tree at age 11, I started with the names of immediate family members. Now, almost 50 years later, my genealogical database contains the names of nearly 210,000 individuals and includes the majority of families who have lived in my home county since its founding. Amazingly, with the use of an app on my mobile phone to connect to my database, I can bring up any of those individuals and their vital statistics and pedigrees in a matter of seconds from wherever I happen to be, and I occasionally do that in order to answer questions of family and friends such as, “I wonder how old she is now?” or “What was his daddy’s name?” And speaking of daddies, the emerging use of DNA in support of genealogical research has been something to behold, and I most notably used it to help establish the paternity of a great-grandmother born out of wedlock.

For certain, a lot of advancements have been made since my childhood. As a kid, I never imagined such ease of access to such a variety and abundance of materials or that spitting in a tube could solve decades-long family mysteries. Such things seemed fantastical and more like science fiction – the kinds of things that belonged to the imaginary world of the Jetsons.

And if you don’t know who the Jetsons are, then we’re definitely of different generations. Rather than explaining it, let’s just say they're “cousins” I discovered during my childhood. 😊