I once again spent way too much time this past work scouring Ancestry.com and putting together my family tree. Those roots seem to go back quite a ways. When I find people who were born in the 1600s, who are allegedly ancestors, a good part of me thinks, “this is all made up. Who kept records back then?” Then I click on the document and a copy of a faded church ledger filled with handwriting no one can decipher shows some names and dates which someone has determined are names of real people and dates they were really born, died or were baptized.
Besides being time-consuming, it is fascinating. We watch TV shows and movies and read books all telling of things that happened hundreds of years ago. It all seems real enough when someone else is giving you their version. But then when you see a name like Hieronymus Paul, born in 1660 in Griesborn, Saarland, Germany, and the computer is telling me this guy is my seventh great-grandfather, how does a person not get kind of excited.
Oh, well, I will keep looking and researching, taking a lot of it with a grain of salt. I’ll also start setting a timer so I get to bed on time.
(Somehow, someone decided that this document witnesses the marriage of Katharina Paul to Johann Wagner. I can make out the name Wagner and month of April, but that’s about it.)
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