One of the foremost experts on Irish genealogical research, John Grenham, has added a new video, called Irish Ancestors: How to start your family research, to his YouTube channel.
The 11-minute video is “For those starting out… and those who started from the wrong place,” and it includes links to about 30 online resources.
Mr. Grenham recommends starting genealogy research by talking to a member in your family where you’ll probably learn more facts and stories than you’d find in the records.
He says, “In most families, there tends to be one or two people — a second cousin, maybe a third cousin out there — who has specialized in keeping track of everybody and is only too delighted to pass the information on.”
Presbyterian records
There are more than 30 videos on Mr. Grenham’s YouTube channel, including one on Presbyterian records that was added a week ago. The videos vary in length from about five to 25 minutes.
Don’t condescend to your ancestors
One video that stands apart from the others in the online collection is Never condescend to your ancestors. It’s a five-minute (gentle) rant during which Mr. Grenham says our ancestors had the same emotions and feelings that we experience. Their societies may have been different from ours, but they were just as complicated and complex as they are today.
He says, “One of the things that genealogy really does teach you is that you cannot condescend to your ancestors. Your ancestors are your equals, if not better.”
In a blog post on the same topic about not thinking our lives are superior to those of our ancestors, Mr. Grenham wrote: “You can’t think of them as quaint, fixed to the one spot, sepia-toned. They moved and worried and loved and lied, and they were just as uncertain about their futures as we are about ours.”
