Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: W is for … lots of Ws
My topic for the letter W in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge has changed so many times, you should see my notebook with all my ideas, and crossing outs (LOL). I expect some of those ideas you’ll see in future posts eventually. Anyway I have settled on the W being for “lots of Ws”. I can hear your going huh, what does that even mean? Well, to me it means two things, firstly Who, What, When, Where and Why, and also World Wide Web.
W is for … lots of Ws
Who, What, When, Where and Why … these are the basic questions that every family historian aims to get answers to for every person on their family tree. Questions such as Who is that person in the photo with your great grandmother? What ship did your great great grandparents emigrate to Australia on? What data was that child born? Where did they live after their arrival? and Why did they leave England? These are just some of the 1000s of questions that arise thoughout the search for your family. And as does happen, when you get an answer to one, it usually creates more questions again. Now for many reasons you’ll never get answers to some of them, but for those of us who are completely obsessed I mean ‘dedicated souls of genealogy’ we don’t EVER stop looking, because YOU JUST NEVER KNOW …
And if you’re like me … always have a pad and pen on your beside table, as sometimes a flash of inspiration of where to search or why comes at the strangest of times.
Now on to the World Wide Web. Seriously does anyone research without the internet these days? OK, maybe a very few, but me, I’m lost if I don’t get to check emails, and the rest of social media a few times day. And to have the ability to be able to type in something on Google, and see what comes up within a few seconds have seriously revolutionised the way people do genealogy.
I won’t ramble on about the Web in this post, as I actually did this topic for my ‘I’ post (I is for Internet). But think about it, we use the internet to search, to browse, to blog, to network with others, to shop, to find records, to write to people and places that might be able to help us with our searches. To learn about the social history of the era and region we’re interested in, and if we’re looking at records in a foreign country, we can use it to help us translate records. Imaging trying to do all of that, or even half of that without the internet. That would be a mighty hard, long, drawnout task.
But I do have a few thank you’s I need to make:
– To the inventor of the internet, THANK YOU.
– To Mr Lonetester who keeps my internet connection running (and puts up with me when the power is out), THANK YOU
– To my geneablogger and social media friends, THANK YOU, it’s a pleasure to be a part of such a wonderful group of people.
– To the groups, individuals and companies who put data online, THANK YOU. It sure makes it easier to find records, particularly when researching from another country.
– To the people who respond to my email queries on message boards, and various places I write to, THANK YOU. It sure beats waiting months for a snail mail letter in the mail.
So as a genealogist, we’d all be lost if we didn’t ask ourselves the Who, What, Where, When and Why question, and I bet anyone who reads this blog would also agree that you’d be lost without the internet to help you with your research too.
4 Responses to “Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: W is for … lots of Ws”
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I’ve always loved how so many ‘question words’ begin with W. And where would we be without the WWW??
Great bunch of W’s Alona. The Wide World Web is a perfect choice…just fantastic!!! thanks
and thank you too Alona for providing us withnthis A to Z challenge and weeks of fun!! Love all your WWWs and how true it is that one answer inevitably leads to far more questions.
awww thanks for the comments everyone 😀