Tuesday 27 September 2011

Name trees

The hard work (see: tedious) of family history has never appealed to me. Luckily my mother has not ever shared this aversion to microfiche searches, hours of hunting through records, traipsing off to cemeteries, and all the other things involved in genealogy.

I enjoy hearing stories, reading names and places and imagining what people's lives were like. Basically... I like all the fun things without the work. That's a fail for me.

Not everyone is as lame as me though, thankfully, and we can all benefit from the connection family history gives us to our ancestors.
"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond.


And their eyes were my eyes."
- Richard Llewellyn
Genealogy isn't just about what has gone before us, but about what is to come. I think it would be great to be familiar with the names at least of our great and grand fathers and mothers. So I did this.



You don't get to choose your family, or rather... you only get to choose one member of your family.
I chose Kyle. 


This is our family tree. 


I might draw leaves on it, but we'll see. I think I like it like this, all scruffy with my hand writing and Gabriel's little plum thumb print (I took it while he was sleeping and he managed to rub ink all over his face... )


Templates for this and other tree designs will be available from the Lady Proteus etsy store when it opens in October. Mine's going in a frame. 


3 comments:

  1. Great idea! Family history has had several mentions lately. At least around me. Perhaps it is a hint or a reminder that I need to do a little of it here and there. Anyway, I was going to say that on my recent visit to my gma's I saw her family tree hanging on the wall. My aunt painted the tree and there are photos of each if us on the branches to help my gma remember.

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  2. Awesome idea! I had something like this i was going to do for our wedding guest book but chose the butterflies instead. I'm definitely down for one!! And i'll need to copy some of your tree :P

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  3. LOVE it! I've been wanting to do a large thing on the wall with pics and things.. just another thing I don't get around to. How big is this one Elle?

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