Timing is everything, isn’t it? I’ve always enjoyed those stories
and movies where they suppose what happens when we make a split-second decision:
one side goes off to one life and the other towards another, completely
different, life. There’s a part of me that believes that happens; that timing, synchronicity, plays a role in my everyday
life.
The greatest example I have of that has been my decision to
return to my genealogical research, having stopped almost 7 years ago because
of a career change. I went from being a very, very busy professional to a
college student (I went school full time to earn my BA in Art History) and even
that path was strange and circuitous. In the end, two months before I
graduated, I had secured a new job as a Consulting Archivist. I was very excited
to be starting a career that incorporated some of my greatest assets: my
attention to detail, organizational and assessment skills, my love of history,
as well as my need to work hands-on.
At first I was so busy learning my new vocation that I really didn’t
have time for personal genealogical research. Being a Consulting Archivist
means having the ability to very quickly learn a collection; usually there’s a
slightly lower learning curve, but knowing what’s in a collection is critical
to having the ability to make it accessible. Plus, I was working at two or
three places at once, so I had to be able to quickly shift gears from one
knowledge base to another.
One collection though had my heart from the beginning, and
in hind sight I now can acknowledge why: the collection was ripe for
genealogical research. It was full of thousands, yes thousands, of records of
individual people. From the start, I tried to bring those people back to life
through the records in order to make the collection more interesting to those
who were making the decisions about its future. Sadly in the end, after five
years, the economy was such that my services were no longer required and I was
let go.
Losing that client would’ve been a much bigger blow had I
not already started working at the small Historical Society Collection I’m at
now. It’s an incredible collection of late 19th century material
from a vibrant, rural town about 45 miles west of Chicago. The initial
processing took more than a year, since I’m only there two days a week, but from
the beginning I recognized the importance of incorporating a genealogical
infrastructure into the collection. It’s paid off in more ways than one as the
research requests have almost always been for individual people and how they
fit into the fabric of the town.
What the heck does that have to do with my own genealogical
research? Well, it’s the synchronicity thing. I started my research in late
1996, when Family Tree Maker, RootsWeb and GenWeb were in their infancy, so
most records were still not available online. I knew how to research, but only
knew one foreign language, had no knowledge about preservation and/or
conservation of materials, no understanding of how to organize and/or arrange
material and a limited appreciation for any or all of those skills. When I started working at my Historical Society client, I had to look at what genealogical resources are now available, what software has been created, what technology can be used, etc. I had to look at it with fresh eyes and different perspective: new timing.
As I sat at a table in early December, looking at original
documents in French, German, Dutch, and Portuguese from the early 19th
century that MY ancestors had signed, touched, carried and lovingly saved, I
was struck by the fact that I would NOT have been able to understand them or
how to handle them or how to stabilize and protect them only five short years ago.
They really would’ve been meaningless to me, as they currently were to my
Cousin who has them in her possession. I laughed when her husband told me it
would take me at least a year to go through the shopping bag full of material
they’d brought and that I wouldn't be able to read most of them because they
were in all kinds of different languages. Their admiration for my ability to
get it all organized, scanned, stabilized and identified in several hours was
great, but for me it was the triumph of FINALLY getting access to documents I
knew existed years before and now was able to hold in my hands.
I’m still reviewing each document, some of which I’ve had to
put into Photoshop to enhance, to glean as much information from as I can. That
process made me take a long hard look at my own material I’d already processed,
and I’ve “found” more information on pages I’ve had in my possession for 15+
years. I’ve had Family Group Sheets someone sent me in late 1996 that are fully
sourced and cited (an interestingly debated subject of late) for which I had no
appreciation when I received them, short of the names and dates I was able to put
into my database. What a shame that I wasn’t able to understand the importance
of that SOURCED information and the time and effort it took to obtain it.
My point here is: Timing is everything. What you can’t find
today may be sitting on a piece of paper you shuffled to the side five years
ago because there just wasn’t anything on it you could use. Because at the time
there wasn’t. Those pictures you pushed to the side, because you didn't know
who the people were in them, may have scribbles on the back that were
meaningless two years ago but now are clues to a line you started to research
last week. Have a look at some of that ‘stuff’ you’ve got stashed away, and let
me know if you ‘find’ anything new. Because timing is everything.
