To Blog or Not to Blog?

Why Do We Care Where We Come From?

Why are we so determined to know where we have come from? The country, the village, the house, we just have this need to know and know every little bit. Every generation and usually every person at some point has a desire to know where they come from. Perhaps its part of our tribal based culture where being apart or identifying as part of a group can give you a sense of pride or fellowship. 

Often times we have not actually met the people we research at all, they died years before we were even born, but the desire and drive exists to know. Perhaps its because the only way of knowing our great great greats is through pictures, stories, personal belongings and identifying where they came from. Maybe it's just a great mystery waiting to be solved!

For myself, I have asked why I have spent over 30 years doing research and the answer that rings the most truthful for me is my Grandfather Hugh Lightbody. He was a good soul, a good man, flawed and imperfect, idealistic and loyal. Kind, compassionate, full of ambition and fight, sense of duty. He was creative, fun loving, mischievousness, and complex. 

1970 Hugh Lightbody & Me

I knew him for just 5 short years of my life and when he past it left me wanting to know more. I had to rely on stories from my family, pictures I would sit and look at for hours. It was when I found papers that he had started showing the family history he was beginning to trace, I decided this was the way I could keep him close to me. While his spirit stayed with me for years after his passing, it has now moved on but I still feel, a palpable feeling, that continuing to look and discover his history is in honour of him, in honour of those five years, those solid foundation years of complete love, acceptance and an unbreakable bond a grandfather and granddaughter share. 

I also admit, I love the detective stuff... and the occasional travelling is nice too. So this began as a way to keep my Grampie close to me and now I can say that because of him, in a way he may never have imagined, I have met some great people, seem some wonderful places, shared experiences that are priceless and met more family I could have ever imagined. To answer the question of this post... To Blog or Not to Blog?....What I am doing in this blog is now for them, for the family, for you! 

Regardless of your belief that knowing where you come from is really important or not at all, it really is a matter of being in the DNA... you could say, needing to know is just part of us.

There is a belief that we influence seven generations ahead of us through our DNA and we are also influenced by the seven generations in the past. Well for our family line that means almost 175 years or more back in time...so putting a date on the youngest of our family at 5 years and the oldest at 80 years the influence on us goes all the way back to John Lightbody and Anne Huching who we believe were from Killinchy County Down, Northern Ireland and puts a time stamp of about 1750.