I read a post by a well-known author that opined about ways to write about “boring ancestors.” How one could inject interest, humor, etc. into dead people who are apparently banal as all get out.
Funny, I don’t have any boring ancestors. I don’t have any famous or well-known ones either. They all have stories.
Oh, I know that people say farmers are boring ancestors or that factory worker or day laborers are boring ancestors. My children both have plenty of those–ancestors who never left the farm, who lived a hardscrabble existence their entire life, etc.
And not any of them are boring. If you research them completely and learn about the location in which they lived, the kinds of work they did, and document them in every record you can there is a story there. Even if they left few records, there’s likely a story and I’ve never found one to be boring.
Personally I don’t think there’s any such thing as boring ancestors.
Only boring descendants.
Elaine G. Bennett says:
Years ago I liked to tell students that no one is so dumb or stupid that they can not find something interesting to do….Happily I did not receive complaints about my observation. I should mention I am 78 years old…
Carla says:
I don’t have any boring ancestors! They were all part of making history. Either here in the USA or back in Europe.
And something was always happening during those times! Wars, droughts, celebrations, births, deaths, inventions, pioneering, creating and doing. Good grief, if our relatives were farmers then we can look at the advances in farming, the machinery used, what they grew or raised in the lo-cal where they lived. Farm machinery advances alone would fill a book. Going from drawn plows and hand reaping fields [can you imagine reaping a whole field with just a sickle and your muscles?!] to horse drawn to steam powered sowers, rakes and reapers! Today one combine can harvest acres in a day where humans and a couple of horses worked in the “back 40” for days.
This could apply to your Jewish shoemaker ancestors in the big cities back east. Your “boring” German settlers down in Texas who farmed and created a new form of music when they blended their polkas with the music of the Tejanos, or the Hillbillies that lived in the valleys where rural electrification came in and changed how grandma went from being the “fire tender” to living in a place with electric lights!
Nah, there’s too much excitement in those lives once lived to be “boring.” It just takes a little effort and imagination to find the stories these people left behind…
mjnrootdig says:
You are exactly right.
Often when someone says their ancestors are “boring,” it means that the descendant has only scratched the surface.