The last of our kind?

Genealogists have learned a great deal about their ancestors by being able to find, read and transcribe old documents, in particular church registers with birth, marriage and death information. Anything older than a hundred years will almost always have been hand-written.

We know there have always been problems with interpreting what some scribe recorded centuries ago. I have found there were as many poor writers in the 18^th century as there are now and it has been sometimes very challenging to figure out what exactly they were trying to record. Not to mention that the names of our ancestors were often spelled differently depending on who heard them or where they lived.

Most of us have been able to get a handle on what information was written because we learned cursive writing in school – many decades ago. We continue to be able to read and write in that style.

The old styles of writing were, in many respects, much different from how we show letters of the alphabet today. But our experience with penmanship at least has allowed us to see the patterns of how words were constructed. Having then familiarized ourselves with those old styles, sometimes with the assistance of the one of the many courses available to genealogist online, we could recognize the names of our ancestors and put together the stories around their births, marriages and burials.

 

Marriage entries from the 1630 Plympton St. Mary, Devon parish register showing, among other unions, the marriage of my 8^th great-grandparents, Nicholas Shepheard (surname spelled exactly the same way it is today) and Margerit Lee.

Technology is being developed to read handwriting through optical character recognition. That will be a great boon to anyone dealing with old documents but it is likely still a long ways off before we have such a program on our own computers.

Schools across North America are phasing out, or have completely removed courses on cursive handwriting. Our own grandchildren have great difficulty in reading anything that has been hand-written. What that means down the road is that there will be fewer of us who will have the ability to read those old records. And the latest generation may be totally unable to do it. There may come a time when all those old letters you are keeping for posterity and as records of family events might be totally unrecognizable.

Have a read of one parent’s lament about children not being taught how to write using a pen or pencil in Karen Green’s article, published a few years ago on the Canadian Family website, Should Students Still Be Taught Cursive Writing? Her words still ring true.

It seems like the world now revolves around technology and communication involving the written word is increasingly being lost to brief outbursts through texting or Twitter – not a lot of it understandable or even polite.

As genealogists studying old documents for information about our ancestors, we may be the last of our kind. So be sure to keep handy all those transcriptions you have made for your family members in the future. They may need them.

Wayne Shepheard is a retired geologist and active genealogist. He volunteers with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. Wayne has also served as an editor of two such publications. He provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Use of Data Concerning Living Persons

I recently received a notice from MyHeritage about photos of people who matched names in my own family tree.

I was surprised and shocked to see pictures of my children and grandchildren there! Along with vital information about them.

We have informed the member that no permission was given to use the photos on MyHeritage, or elsewhere – by any family member. We were especially concerned with them being related to living persons, especially children.

I fail to understand how information about our children is relevant to the study of ancestors. Yes, they are the latest in any line but who they are, when they were born, where they live or what they do has nothing to do with their great-great-grandparents. It is the latter who, as genealogists and family historians, we seek to find information about. Invading the privacy of minors – and that is what is happening here – does not advance the study of our forebears.

I believe people need to take extra care when publishing information of any kind about living people but should never, in my opinion, put up photos of children, without the parents' express written approval.

I do agree that the photo library of MyHeritage could be of value in the search for information about our dead relatives. In my case, I already have copies of the photos that were shown in the notice sent to me. Some actually looked like they were copied from my files although I do not think that was the case. They may have been shared by others to whom I sent copies, though. It has happened before and is impossible to control.

It is not necessary to import the bad behaviour shown in much of social media to genealogical pursuits. Surely we can respect the privacy of living people – AGAIN, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN – as we study and share information about our ancestors.

I have made my views known to MyHeritage. We will see what steps they take to preserve privacy. I have also complained to the individual who put up the photos on her family tree site. We expect her to remove them, along with the vital information and, in the future, seek permission before she uses such material.

By the way, on my own MyHeritage family tree I have clicked the box that says guests can view limited information but “can never view information about living people” in my family website. Only those that are invited to join the tree may do so. I also do not allow site members to invite other members to the site. I am hopeful that is enough to protect the privacy of people I have named in my family tree.

Wayne Shepheard is a retired geologist and active genealogist. He volunteers with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. Wayne has also served as an editor of two such publications. He provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Keeping It All in Perspective

When I was learning about geology – many decades ago – we were shown a diagram comparing Earth’s natural history with a 24-hour clock. That was presented to give us an idea of the relative lengths of the various geological eons, era and periods, as well as a perspective of the age of the Earth in relation to how long people have been around.

Retrieved from Eras of the Geologic Time Scale

Few people drive through a mountain range, for example, will have a proper perspective of the time it took to first have the primary material be deposited as sediment, turn the accumulation into rock and later uplift the whole succession into what we see now in the towering cliffs. In the Rocky Mountains of western North America, the rocks we now see were formed as far back as the Middle Proterozoic Era (about 1,500,000,000 years ago). The uplift and deformation of the strata began in the middle of the Mesozoic Era (about 175,000,000 years ago) and continue today.

Retrieved from Wikitravel: Rocky Mountains (Canada)

Different forms of the clock-comparison diagram have been produced over the years but the stories are still the same: the Earth took a long time to reach its present form; hominids, in various forms, have existed only for about 5,000,000 years. The human segment of that period is only about 2,000,000 years which takes up the last minute and a quarter when history is viewed in relation to the clock. Within that most recent, very small interval, the human species has developed from forest-dwelling hominids to modern man.

Retrieved from The History of Life: Represented on a Clock

Retrieved from What is a timeline of human evolution?

One might argue that humans have always been organized around families but there was no clear evidence of that prior to the last 10,000 years (the Holocene Epoch) unless you count the cave paintings by hominids in Europe about 40,000 years ago. The beginning of the Holocene interglacial period is when people began to expand their geographic range, gather in small communities, eventually build cities, live in family units and transform the environment around them. Communication in the form of writing – such as cuneiform script – was only invented a few thousand years ago. Civilization, indeed all of mankind’s entire recorded history, occurred during the Holocene.

Retrieved and modified from Skeptical Science: We’ve been through climate changes before

The oldest document I have come across is called the Elphantine papyri, from 449 BC (2,500 years ago) which appears to be a formal recognition of the marriage between a Jewish temple officer. Ananiah, and Tamut, an Egyptian slave. Most of us won’t find records that old that relate to our own families.

When genealogists research their roots, they are only looking at a very recent fragment of time in which humans have inhabited the planet. They are not really researching family history, or the history of families, but only studying the events of families preserved in the written record. Most of what we can view in terms of records go back only to about the early 15^th century – about 600 years ago. It is true that certain types of records were kept in previous eras but few made mention specifically of people and their families. As a result, they are not of much value in constructing true and continuous family histories.

The following shows how all these time periods relate to the age of the Earth (according to the charts shown here):

      Period                                          Time (Years)           Proportion                  Clock Interval

      Age of Earth                               4,550,000,000                     100%                            24 hours

      Hominid History                                5,000,000                    0.11%       7 minutes, 22 seconds

      Modern Humans                                2,000,000                0.0004%        1 minute, 17 seconds

      Civilization                                              10,000                0.0002%              0.154 of a second

      Limit of Genealogy Research                      600              0.00001%          0.00924 of a second

      My Personal Years of Study                          50            0.000001%          0.00077 of a second

           

My experience in geology and genealogy take up an exceedingly small slice of time relative to Earth’s history!

Just to keep it all in perspective!

Wayne Shepheard is a retired geologist and active genealogist. He volunteers with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. Wayne has also served as an editor of two such publications. He provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated