Why Genealogy? An excellent question, of course, and one which has a different answer for every genealogist. For those who don't much care who their great-great grandparents were, what they did, or where they came from, the excitement felt by the committed genealogy nerd upon locating a fourth cousin once removed via the Internet is incomprehensible. For those of us who regularly correspond via e-mail with pleasant relations, near or distant, the excitement is readily acknowledged if not easy to articulate.

For the uninterested, the temptation exists to think of genealogy as a pointless exercise in obsessive lint-picking over the long-dead, generally in an attempt to find a "noble" ancestry. Well, not exactly ... For most of us in the United States, genealogy merely affirms our humble genetic histories, so it isn't just that. For example, far more Sons of Confederate Veterans find deserters in their pasts than generals. If you haven't found at least one illegitimate ancestor yet, then you probably haven't been looking hard enough.

Of course, the beginnings of an interest in genealogy vary. It is usually as simple as the desire to understand more about an immigrant grandparent's heritage. It may be a prurient curiosity about a "family secret." Mostly, it is the desire to place one's ancestry in the historical context of this country and to understand the colonization, pioneering, and social and military history of the United States. In the end, the "hook" of genealogy is usually that it becomes the enthusiast's own personal focus for learning history, and for historical investigation and writing.

For this nerd, the seed was planted when I was about fourteen, met a distant relative, and learned for the first time that my great-great grandparents, whose names my father didn't even know, were buried a thousand miles apart because my great-great grandfather had died in a federal P.O.W. camp during the Civil War. I didn't rush to the Archives that day and it took me two decades to read Shelby Foote, but I never forgot that.

Twenty-five years later I had enormous fun researching the story of the unfortunate ancestor, found out a lot of less-than-noble things about him, and wrote a history that was a great Christmas gift for all my siblings, nieces and nephews. In other words, learning about the old boy buried up there in Elmira, New York, so far from home in Georgia, gave me the personal desire to understand the most influential event in our country's history. For me, the Civil War ceased then to be about moonlight and magnolias, or even slavery, politics, and economics, but it became the story of four ancestors whose lives were shaped by it.

As a southerner married to an Italian/American/French/Basque woman, genealogy has since given me a wonderful excuse for learning about, and passing on to my children, historical subjects far beyond our Civil War. These interests are as disparate as the Acadian expulsion from eastern Canada, the Creek Indian Wars and pioneer life in the southeastern U.S., the etymology of surnames, and the great immigration of Italians to the U.S. early in this century.

I think we all want to know how we fit into the big puzzle. Those of us who live in big cities want our links to a small town past. Those of us who wear a tie to work every day long to understand that our ancestors tilled the soil. Speaking English, we want to know our tongues were not always so homogenized. While we live in peace, we treasure our warrior ancestry. Hey, it's just fun!

Regards, Frederick N. Gleaton, Atlanta, GA

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