I honestly have no idea how I stumbled onto this particular topic today, but for whatever reason I started wondering what my family tree looks like. I know that there have been other relatives in the past who showed an interest in this – I think someone even put together a little “book” on their findings, but I’m guessing that there isn’t much online for the digitally curious like myself.
It’s something that I’m both mildly curious, but also somewhat afraid to explore because I do see the potential for a kind of neat project in there – some sort of interactive family tree where distant family hunting for genealogical data could plug their piece of the pie into the larger Sevener dessert buffett, to make a food analogy out of it! (I wonder if all Seveners love food?) I’m not necessarily looking for anybody’s life history or anything, but it might be kind of neat to be able to explore a tree that shows geographic locations, professions, special interests – that sort of thing.
Of course, the fear part comes in because I’m sure this would be just an absolutely massive task and I certainly don’t have the time for it right this moment, but at the same time I can also see the value in it not just for my own curiosities, but hopefully for a good number of people who eventually grow curious about their past. Maybe that’s just another sign of getting old, that I finally care to learn about my own heritage – I don’t know…
Does this type of thing already exist??? I really have no desire to reinvent the wheel or anything, but when I searched all I came across were some genealogy forums and a bunch of paper forms that you could download to have people fill out, whereas I’m basically picturing more of a web-based, pseudo-Facebook sort of app that stores everything in a database and then makes it all neat and pretty for people to browse.
This might be something to explore when I travel up north for Christmas here in a few months. Maybe…