Wouldn’t we all like to descend from a King or Queen? Their genealogy is so well documented but instead we have to start with
Kith and Kin
According to the MacMillan Dictionary, the British definition is
Kith comes from a word of Germanic origin meaning ‘known’. Kin is also of Germanic origin, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘give birth to’. Your kith are your friends or acquaintances, while your kin are all the people you are related to.
Here in Tasmania some of your kith can also be your kin somewhere down or across through the generations.
When starting out your family history research, it is so important to question those kin about their memories and knowledge of the family or person you are researching. Start asking questions as soon as possible or perhaps show them a picture they can reminisce about, even finding a newspaper article might bring back memories. All these will help build the story of that person or family group you are researching.
Kin often have heirlooms handed down through the family; not so in my family though. All I have is a handwritten copy of dates from a birthday book for the DAVEY family in Evandale area.
For the family history course I participated in during December/January 2014/5 one of our activities was to interview a person. I chose my dad as I wanted to gather more info about his parents and grandparents. I recorded using Soundcloud app on my ipad and had a list of questions I wanted to ask. But after asking the question I would let dad ramble with his thoughts and I found out lots of things I never knew and probably would never have asked him about.
So make sure you question your kin (and even your kith) as they might have something to add to your family history research.
Readers: Please leave a comment about my post or something beginning with K that relates to your family history or your research.
