Aunty Dot, she has worked tirelessly on the family genealogy for years and no-one gives her any credit. She tries to talk to the family about her discoveries and wonderful stories she has found but doesn’t get very far. She thinks to herself “If only she had someone like Jack the Ripper or a famous celebrity in the family tree, then they would take notice! ”
Every family tree has a proverbial aunt who does the research for the family. I read an article last week and they estimated that in a family with around 40 people only 1 will actually go on the search for all the family. Poor Aunt Dot usually draws the short straw. But although Aunty Dot does all the research, not a lot is known about what Aunty Dot has. That last family together she was chatting about someone or other going to World War One, who was that?
In my own family I have an Aunty Dot (not her real name). Before I had my own children, she tirelessly worked away at getting our genealogy together. She did the trips to the graveyard collecting photos and original cemetery receipts from 1898. She shared with me what she had and I took her on the roller coaster journey with me to find more. She pondered why her grandfather from Balmain -Charles William Robinson – was buried in Waverly Cemetery. I shared with her that Charles’ father – John Emmanuel Robinson and his mother – Sarah Ann Asquith and other family members where buried in Balmain cemetery and there was petitions to demolished it in the years Charles lived. (Balmain cemetery was later demolished and a park stands over where around 10,000 people were buried) We both agreed that would have been a great motivation to not be buried there! She shared her stories and hunches for new information and I did the research. I made many more discoveries and my research went off in the mail after I found our original ancestor that come of Australia.
Call your Aunty Dot this week and ask what information that she has. Get her to send it on to you and have a read through. You might even think Aunty Dot is such a champion that you buy her a box of chocolates and you can’t wait to see her at the next family reunion to talk about Uncle John that went to World War One. I think we all get to an age when what Aunty Dot has to say comes up in your memory as an opportunity missed. Do you have an Aunty Dot?
