As I gradually get back to normal after the last few months (see Fading & Passing), I thought I would return to my regular weekly posts, though perhaps in a shorter format for a while.
Genealogy is done backwards in time, from known to unknown. That is the way we ought to research, starting from a firm foundation and testing the surrounding ground for pitfalls. Our research doesn’t follow a solid line. It is dashed. We simply cannot know about every moment of every life we research. There are always gaps as we step backwards in time. It is natural to wonder if all is right or if we missed discovering a pitfall because we happened to step over it.
History, of course, unfolds forward in time. Thinking about our results forward in time gives a new perspective on what seemed obvious as we stepped our way back. It is obvious that when tracing a married couple backwards, that they lived in roughly the same place before they married. After all, they met somehow. Find a couple after their marriage, and find their respective families before their marriage, and it may seem very sure that we have the right people. Think about it forward. Retrace those steps. Follow as their immigrant parents start from different places at different times, cross the ocean, and then find new traces of them in the New World as neighbors. It seems inevitable when working in one direction, of course it was that way, and yet it is a thrill when thinking in the other direction, when working forward, when it is far from a given that two people will end up in the same place, at the same time, and find them there, where you hadn’t seen them before. That is an epiphany.