Genealogy and Lineage Research
From Rags to Riches and Back Again
Capturing the rise and fall of ancestors in snapshots
While writing the lineage books on my family, I noticed an interesting trend. It’s actually a pretty old story. Someone who is poor works really, really hard and their grandkids end up with lots of land and money. Or the opposite, someone who is really rich makes some really bad decisions and their kids end up begging in the streets. The trend I noticed is that this happens in a family line constantly over time, like a pendulum swinging back and forth.
The traceable families were the ones who swung back quickly enough to stay relevant in the records or who had mediocre rises and falls. The ones who rise too high tend to fall the hardest, and the ones who fall the hardest tend to disappear.
Focusing on a single family — on one couple and their kids or grandkids — is a lot like looking at a single tree in the midst of a forest. You can note how large it grew, how well it did in its environment, whether it continued on to another generation. And it may be impressive. But if you take a step back and look at the other trees around it, you get perspective into its place in the forest.
