When everything is connected to everything else, for better or for worse, everything matters.
Bruce Mau
I ran into that quote a few days ago. Bruce Mau is a designer and architect, not a genealogist, but this is one of those concepts that genealogist need to consider. We often think about researching an ancestor. We think about that as if it is an isolated act, with only those genetic relationships we place in our genealogical charts as being relevant. There are, though, many, many connections—to people, places, occupations, organizations… It all matters.
It matters to our research. Different connections provide different clues. Different light is thrown on our problems. Those connections may even help us to define that elusive ancestor. When names change, or are too common, it is those connections that can link together to form our safety net and let us determine who was who.
It matters to who our ancestors were. It isn’t just that those connections are useful to us in our research. It is that those connections were important to our ancestors in their lives. We cannot hope to understand them without those connections, because they would not have been who they were without them. Those connections hold and hint at some of the richness of those lives.
What connections have you documented for your ancestors? How have they proved useful? What connections might you have missed?
When everything is connected, everything matters when hunting ancestors.