I recently saw pictures of my grandparents’ former home. The exterior looked the same, but the inside had been significantly altered. It was fun to look inside the home, but the pictures generated no memories of my grandparents or the time I spent there. It was great to have a current picture of the home, but the pictures of the inside made it seem as if I was looking inside a home which I had never been in.
It almost served as a metaphor for how genealogists have to look at information and people from the past. Certain things, like the exterior of my grandparents’ home, change little over time if they change at all. Other things, like the interior of my grandparents’ home, change quite a bit. It’s always worth a few minutes to think about what was different in 1825 and what was pretty much the same. It’s the not thinking about it at all that can be a problem.
When looking at the past, I should be asking myself: what contemporary information do I need to understand this record I have located about an ancestor? Typically it’s maps, popular culture, current events, laws in effect at the time, and cultural morays.
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