It has all the makings of a good mystery... a basic outline with a few essential characters, an intriguing detail or two and plenty of unknowns. And thanks to today's online resources, anyone can begin unravelling a uniquely intricate plot - their past.
Heather MacAlister, channel manager at local genealogy site Ancestry24, says people start exploring their past for various reasons. This includes everything from supporting a land claim or ancestral visa, to claiming an inheritance, to family legends about great-granddad being an old war hero. “In every family rumour there's an ounce of truth,” she says.
In an age where information is increasingly digitised and collated, researching one's family history online has become a growing phenomenon. “As more and more information is published on the Internet, so people are getting more interested and at ease with it,” notes MacAlister.
“In the old days you had to write letters or go to the national archives; now Web sites like the British archives make it easy to find information.”
The world's largest genealogy company, Ancestry.com, began making historical records available online in 1996, and such databases have made life easier for many researchers searching in the UK. “In SA, most genealogical archives are kept at the National Archives, Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and the Master of the High Court, and trying to get hold of someone in the latter is a nightmare,” notes MacAlister. The department is reluctant to make people's details available online because of the risk of identity theft, she adds.
Local site Ancestry24 started off eight years ago with 5 000 records, and now has over five million. Most are sourced by Ancestry24 staff or through agreements with various institutions or individuals who make their private material available on the site.
The site offers a family tree builder tool that allows users to create a map of their ancestral lineage by adding names and dates visually, similar to compiling a scrapbook that documents each person in the family.
“The impact is unbelievable; people just keep demanding more and more,” says MacAlister, who adds it's a struggle to keep up with the demand. “People expect stuff immediately. They don't want to stand in a queue at home affairs; they want to download it now.”
Natalie Da Silva, chairman of the Johannesburg branch of the Genealogical Society of SA (GSSA), says a lot of people's research into their family trees has a genetic slant, as they explore their medical history for the occurrence of specific conditions like high cholesterol or breast cancer.
“Forewarned is forearmed, and if they know what they're genetically predisposed to, they can be better prepared.”
Following the clues
Conrod Mercer, a long-time genealogist and former president of the GSSA, began researching his own ancestry when he was around 20 years old.
After 30 years of experience in tracing one's roots, he says the basic principles remain the same: “Start by working from the known to the unknown. So you start with yourself, and work back from there, to parents and grandparents. You also have to go backwards in time - from death, to children, to marriage, to birth.”
Another tip is to check at the beginning whether anyone else has gathered information on your family. “There's nothing worse than spending years and years researching something, only to find someone else has done it already.”
Genealogy is a science for both the patient and perseverant. Even with a basic idea of where to start, the process can easily get derailed, starting with the documentation. “You can apply to the Department of Home Affairs for a birth certificate, fill in all the forms and it can take a year for them to come back to you just to tell you they can't help,” says Mercer.
According to the home affairs Web site, issuing of an unabridged birth, death or marriage certificate costs R75, and requires a trip to a DHA office. There are also indexes of local births available on Web sites like Ancestry24, although these will have to be verified with actual records. Mercer says official registration starts at around 1900, depending on the province, and for dates prior to that one will have to consult church records of baptisms.
Fortunately, a persistent genealogist has a number of resources at their disposal. If the relative owned property or assets, for example, there should be a deceased estate file, which will contain valuable documents such as their will and death notice. A death notice is particularly valuable, and differs from a death certificate, which usually gives the cause of death and a few brief personal details.
Death notices, on the other hand, can be a veritable goldmine for a family history sleuth. Apart from the person's place and date of birth, it can also contain details about their occupation, how old they were, their current (and previous) spouse, including where they got married, their children, their parents' names, the name of the person who filled the notice in (usually a close relative), and whether they left a will.
Not all death notices will be equally detailed, but they can provide a helpful starting point for further research.
While biographical details such as names and dates form the skeleton of a family history, a little digging is required to add the shades and colours that make up a fully-fledged tree.
If you say you're a beginner, people bend over backwards to help.
Natalie da Silva, GSSA
“Try to find out about the rest of people's lives,” says Mercer. “If you're young, speak to your parents and grandparents about people they knew. If they aren't around you'll battle to get that kind of information, unless they were well-known.” If they were involved in an organisation or politics, for example, there might be printed sources, such as references in the Dictionary of South African Biography.
But for ordinary folk living in the days before prolific self-documentation via social media, personal information isn't all that available. There may be a few school or university records, but then usually only if the person was particularly notable. These personal voids in the broader narrative of history can make it difficult to flesh out relatives' personalities and experiences.
It's these hard-to-find details, however, that are often the most intriguing, says Mercer. “You can find out all these surprising things, like the fact that a relative had an illegitimate child in the past, or that someone who's now as pure as the driven snow has an ancestor that married a freed slave in the 1700s.”
For Delia Robertson, manager of RootsWeb's South African British Immigrants newsgroup and genealogist at local site e-Family (www.e-family.co.za), it began with a letter.
Your very existence depends on them... if they married someone else, you wouldn't be here.
Conrod Mercer, genealogist
“After my father's death we had some old papers with a summary of the family's history, and both parents were fond of telling family stories, so I wanted to know a bit more about it.
“One of the things the history included was the addresses of people who were living in the south of the country - around George and Knysna. I wrote to a relative and got a fabulous reply, along with a whole bunch of original documents that tickled my interest. One person led to another and soon I was writing letters and telephoning people and then I started getting into the documents.”
Mercer notes that a culture of global citizenship has led people to start asking themselves where they come from. “In the olden days, families used to stay close together and gather regularly, so they knew each other much better. But in modern times people travel more and are more isolated, so it spurs them to get involved in finding out about their families.
“You might know your parents and grandparents, but what about the people before that? Your very existence depends on them...if they married someone else, you wouldn't be here.”
Family ties
There's a reason people stream into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all across the world, and for many it has nothing to do with religion.
“The Mormon Church has gone around the world filming birth, death and marriage records from churches and other sources, and copies of these microfilms can be accessed by the public,” says Mercer.
The church's Family History Library holds over 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed records, 727 000 microfiche, 356 000 books, and 3 725 electronic resources, covering most of the world.
This extensive genealogical research stems from the church's belief that members will be reunited with their families for eternity, so identifying and doing ordinances for their ancestors is an important part of their faith.
There are around 4 500 Family History Centres worldwide, which are open to the public at no charge, and at which copies of records can be made. You can search for a nearby centre on the Family Search site.
Mercer gives a word of caution though. “On like the Mormon Web site, 90% of the information is submitted by members of the church, so there could be errors.” Robertson echoes the need to verify information found on this platform.
For Mercer, it's all about playing detective. “Every little bit of information you get gives you a clue to get more.” Technology has made it easier to piece together the bits and pieces from various sources, he adds.
“You get sophisticated software packages where you can store all your information, references and photos, which is much easier than in earlier days when you had to hand-draw charts or keep hundreds of index cards or scrapbooks,” says Robertson. “Now all you do is enter data; attach a photograph, file or Web site; put it onto a DVD and share it with the family.”
She says the Internet has made a huge difference to people researching their family history.
“Not only can you communicate with like-minded individuals and get advice, you can also connect with relatives from all over the world that you weren't even aware of. I've been lucky enough to do that and build up relationships with people I never knew existed.
“In my father's family, when we started meeting up with other people - literally hundreds of cousins - it was extraordinary how many threads of commonality run from one generation to the next.”
Apart from the personal connection, it also gives one a sense of time and place, she says. “You learn not only about your family, but about the time during which they lived. If you find out the collapse of the silk trade severely affected your family, suddenly that historical event becomes more personal; it brings the story of people to life.”
Start hunting
According to Da Silva, there has been a resurgence of interest in genealogy, which has become an extremely popular topic online. “We've seen a resurrection of the craft following the economic slump. All of a sudden people are trying to find things they can do at home which don't cost much, and genealogy is one of them.”
It was extraordinary how many threads of commonality run from one generation to the next.
Delia Robertson, e-Family
Da Silva encourages the curious to join a RootsWeb interest list and see how others pose questions and conduct research.
“There are so many Web sites out there and such a lot of help available. The Utrecht list on RootsWeb has a substantial amount of information [Dutch-Netherlands-based] and if you say you're a beginner people bend over backwards to help.”
MacAlister's biggest aim is to make more records available to more people. “It's going to happen - the US, England and Australia are already doing it and we're next in line. People just need to understand that this will happen slowly in SA.”
Finally, Robertson notes that tracing one's roots brings a complete change in perspective. “In my family, there's a habit of keeping old letters - I have copies of letters going back 200 years. It gives you a connection in time and place; of what has gone before you and helps you understand how families have evolved in certain ways and in different places.”
For Da Silva, it's all about finding new meaning in something like a handwritten note or piece of memorabilia; she likes to paraphrase Winston Churchill: “Without a past, there's no future - if you don't know where you come from, how do you know where you're going?”
* If you liked this feature, you also might like: The risky librarian
Share