M y wife and I recently celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary by embarking on a six-day road trip in the English countryside, visiting some of the places that our ancestors lived, married, worked and died in, and – while we were away – Ifound myself reflecting on how much of our research today, by contrast, is carried out in our own homes. We spend hours sitting in front of a computer searching for documents and viewing the results of our searches as digital images on a screen.
We’ve started to think of leaving the house to view original documents in a library or record office as a daring adventure in which we find ourselves playing the part of a modern-day Indiana Jones or a Lara Croft.
It’s important that we don’t lose sight of the enormous research potential represented by the vast collections of documents in the care of our archives and libraries – especially those which aren’t available online – but there’s another vital aspect of research which involves us getting up off our sofas and heading out into the big wide world.
Whether your ancestors lived in a tenement block in the heart of a northern industrial town or in a honeysuckle-covered cottage in a picture book village in the Cotswolds, the process of walking in their footsteps is an invaluable one.
