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Every year, thousands of people set off on the path to find their ancestors. They search for the names, dates, and places they need to complete their family trees and family group sheets. Many get to experience the excitement of entering some piece of newly discovered information when their search is successful.
The goal of this site is not to help you find your ancestors’ names (although the Records section does contain a lot of how-to information). Instead, this site’s goal is to help you understand your ancestors’ lives – particularly those who lived in the 1700 and 1800s in Western Europe. For grandparents and even great-grandparents, you can often learn quite a bit about their lives by talking to people who knew them. However, once you get back several generations, the task becomes more involved. In most cases, the only evidence of these ancestors that survives is names and dates in basic records. Despite the lack of detail about your ancestors individually, there is a lot of information that can help you understand your ancestors’ lives. By accessing this, you can gain important insights into their daily routines and most important life events. To find this information you have to do two things: first, look deeper into the records and second, look beyond your ancestor. I hope this site can help you do both of these. The website focuses on the experiences of ancestors from Western Europe. Many of the topics describe the events and circumstances of peasants (the group into which the huge majority of our ancestors fell) in this area. Specific sections provide a more in-depth look at lives of the common people from Mecklenburg, Germany; Skåne, Sweden; and Buckinghamshire, England. Those with ancestors from these three countries but not these specific localities will probably find much of use here as well.
As I have learned more about the circumstances of my ancestors’ lives, I have been rewarded greatly. For one thing, these insights have helped me trace my family more effectively. But, the information I’ve found has done more than this. Learning about my ancestors’ lives has made my genealogy research and the people whose names I add to my family tree more meaningful to me and to other family members with whom I share the information. I know it can do the same for you. Good luck! |
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