History

I love genealogy, but not names and dates.

A person's statistics mean nothing without knowing anything about their lives, the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their responses to what was happening around them.  I could be looking at skeletons that are exactly the same except for their sizes. But I can clothe these ancestors of mine with history.

Great grandmother Sarah and her husband Jack raised their children during the American Civil War. I can use what has been written about the skirmishes around their home to make their names vibrant and colorful. Sarah and Jack had 11 children; six of them lived. Two died during the war, perhaps from malnutrition.

History clings to Sarah and Jack, and from that I can clothe them with emotions.