About Williams & Greenough Family
Please sign in to see more. It may sound very corny but the creation of this database has been a very emotional journey to me as my family means so so much. With this in mind, I am going to dedicate the production of this family tree to my husband and our three wonderful children.
Simply struggling to get my father to understand the rationale for my yearning to know who we are lead to a gap of nearly ten years before I took up the challenge to trace my ancestors. By now the internet was the electronic vehicle to search and identify many people within our family tree. It has also allowed my father to recall things which he’d allowed to pale into insignificance choosing to forget about some memorable things he’d experienced as a child.
I once read, ‘We are the chosen’. i.e. within each family there is at least one person who seems to be 'called' to find their ancestors; to put flesh on their bones and make them live again; to tell the family stories and to feel that somehow they know and approve. I think this is so true as I have found doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts, but instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.
They say, those who have gone before cry out to us... ‘Tell our story’ and so we do. In finding them, we somehow reflect and find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now? I have lost count. You would be proud of us with what we have achieved. How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? No, it’s not about getting older and wiser, it’s about something from within that gives you this passion and drive to find out exactly who you are and who went before you, shaping and moulding us all as individuals.
I go beyond just documenting facts in this database. You may think I am going all sentimental as it goes to who am I and why do I do the things I do. It starts following the birth of our second grandchild in Oct. 2009 and the love and admiration in his eyes at the tender age of 5mths for his 5yr. old ‘big brother’. But the other extreme, it goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds, inscriptions on graves lost due to the harsh weathering over the years and, indifference and feeling I am saying ‘I can't let this happen’.
It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today – lt goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.
It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a Nation like Owen Charles Williams (my grandfather) who fought at the Battle of Ypres in WW1 and was awarded the Military Medal for his bravery. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us that we might be born who we are. Do we remember them, we definitely should. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence because we are them and they are us. So, as a scribe called, ‘I tell the story of my family’. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family story tellers.
Christine Greenough (2012) |