You never met them, but without them you wouldn't be here. They're
your ancestors; those long-forgotten people whose lives were so
different, yet so similar, to yours today.
Why study these people who are long gone and buried? Well, think about
it. If just one of the thousands of your direct ancestors didn't
exist, you wouldn't either. If your great-great-great-great-great-
grandmother never met your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather,
your significant other would never have met you because, well, you
wouldn't be alive.
Besides honoring the significance of your ancestors, studying your
family's genealogy can just be plain fascinating. There are so many
things you can learn, such as why you or your parents grew up on one
location or another. For example, if one of your ancestors was a
Hessian soldier used by the British to fight the American colonists,
you might find some relatives living in Pennsylvania, which had a
large population of German-Americans, many of them Hessian soldiers
who deserted the British and later fought for the Americans. Many of
their descendants later moved to Ohio....
http://groups.google.com/group/familytreesyvs
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