Researching the - 20TH CENTURY -
As an introduction to genealogy, BBC celebrity series Who Do You Think You Are? successfully shows many of the highs and lows of researching family history. Yet, while most episodes reflect the field’s reputation for pushing ‘as far back as possible’ – BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner and EastEnders actor Danny Dyer were able to trace their lineages, ultimately, back to William the Conqueror – occasionally the series shows how family history can also be an invaluable means of learning about people much closer to us.
Their respective family histories gifted both Alan Cumming and Sir Patrick Stewart with a new understanding of how extreme experiences during the Second World War had affected, respectively, Alan’s maternal grandfather and Patrick’s father. As the latter explained, on learning of the events which had triggered his father’s untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: ‘I don’t think he’s been a human being for me before’.
In her book Tracing Your Twentieth Century Ancestors (2016), author and expert genealogist Karen Bali shared her belief that focusing exclusively on increasingly distant ancestors is arguably ‘only half the story’ when it comes to family history. ‘There is little point in knowing minute details about the lives of distant, long-dead ancestors,’ she wrote, ‘if you have no interest in your grandparents’ generation or if you have only a superficial relationship with your aunts, uncles and cousins – living, breathing kin who share your heritage and DNA.’
The further back we go in our family history, the more reliant we become upon rare scraps of information and the increasingly elusive mentions of our ancestors scattered across far-fromcomplete sources. Ironically, anyone born since the
