General Discussion
When most people think about history they usually say, most of the time, they were never interested in the subject. They will say history is boring, it's in the past, and why do we need to study things that have already happened? These are good questions which need to be answered carefully in order to generate curiosity. A good place to start, as I recently discovered, is searching for a family's past and creating a family tree. I would certainly believe most people would at least be curious about their ancestry. If this is the case, then you are beginnnig to create that curiousity in history. Only in this case it is genealogy, which can lead the individual to the discovery they had family members who were living during historical events which now links their family and history together.
Today, there are millions of people performing searches to find any information about their past whether they perform census, birth, and marriage searches and in many cases, take a DNA test to determine their biological make-up. This process takes time and effort, but the results can be very rewarding. Such is my case as I decided to perfrom a background search on my family's past.
I began this search using MyHeritage.com to search for my ancestors. I began with my own information and then added my father and mother's information, and almost immediately my grandparents, on both sides, and others began to populate my family tree. The results were astounding, and I must admit I was excited by the results. I found more information about many of my ancestors. This information is more than the dash that appears between the year of birth and year of death. Information such as locations of births, towns, counties, states, marriages, children, and even the countries they originally emigrated were discovered. There were some cases where the cemetery where they are buried is listed. This was exciting news as I opened each name in the family tree and discovered information that I knew nothing about. However, in some cases the information was not available, especially as I went back four or five generations, but at least I was given a name, location of birth, marriages, death, and more information to continue my search further into my family's past.
As I reviewed my mother's family, the Allison's, I found the first ancestor arrived in Colonial America from London, England. His name was Thomas Allanson who was born in 1639. Based on his information and the name of his wife, Mary Roberts who was also born in England, I found the names of their children and colony of residence. Four generations of the Allanson/Allison famly would live in Maryland, somewhere in the vicinity of modern-day Washington D. C. The name eventually changed to Allison during Thomas's grandson's lifetime. His name wa also Thomas. It would be his grandson who would move the family from Maryland to the western side of Pennsylvania at some point after his birth in 1730 and before his death in 1823. The logical explanation might be due to the Revoilutionary War, but that cannot be confirmed at this point. However, now the Allsion family was settled in Washington County in western Pennsylvania, where many of the family still reside.
On my father's side it took slightly more detective work on my past to locate past generations. I had information on my grandparents and was able to begin my search from there. This led me to discover something about my family name I never knew. Our first family member arrived in the Colonies from Germany. George Phillip Berne/Barney (there is some question on the spelling) was born in Germany and arrived in the Colonies after the Revolutionary War. He. too, would arrive in Maryland. It was here he met his wife, Katherine Elizabeth Fagley. They would eventually move to the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania in the area of Greene County.
As I look back on my search, which I must admit I am somewhat addicted to now, I was constantly surprised by many of my discoveries. For example, one of my relatives was born in Peters Township, Washington County. This is the area where I grew up in after relocating there from Cleveland after my father's transfer with his company. The history of my family was coming "alive" as I searched further. The more results I found the more excited I became as I discovered who and where my family came from, who they married, the names of their children. and where they lived. This was incredibly exciting and historical at the same time.
If "history" is not something of interest to you, then I recommend beginning a family tree and discovering the excitement of finding your family members. Believe me, you will not be disappointed. And concering the subject of history, you might just find yourself interested in this topic afterall.