My first genealogy love.
Looks pretty plain, doesn’t it? Back in the day, my father had corresponded with the authors and mailed off enough money to cover their photocopying fees. And as a kid I was completely enthralled with this pile of paper. Names, birth dates, marriage dates, death dates, locations, over and over: just the facts. There’s a tiny bit of context in there: a brief introduction, some land info, the occasional note; but mostly just those dry facts. Somehow it all struck me as fascinating reading material: inside is listed almost every descendent of Daniel Wier and Pheobe Mumford—my fifth-great grandparents— as they left far-away Rhode Island and travelled to my home province, Nova Scotia. They were original grantees at Rawdon, where they propagated Wiers like bunnies. And they were ALL related to ME. Over the years I read it from front to back many many times.
One thing did irk me a little: I wasn’t in this publication at all. Our particular branch ended with my grandfather. Kids younger than me were in there—presumably more closely related to the authors—but my little nuclear family didn’t exist. So I wrote us in. I also wanted to know what else was missing. What were these people like? How did they live? Were they nice? Were any of them criminals?
This was a great way to connect with my father, who loved history and obsessed over his paternal line. He collected details of name origins and crests and even found a tartan. Finding me a willing assistant, we tromped through (my first) overgrown graveyards and read (my first) pale photocopies of wills from the Nova Scotia Archives. We even took a trip to Narragansett, Rhode Island, to see what remained of the colonial neighborhood.
And that book, those romps, those photocopies, and most especially my father, made sure that first love stuck.