The seeds of my interest in family history were planted by my parents when I was a small child. I remember watching my dad fill out family group sheets with names, dates, and locations painstaking researched from microfiche and visits to cemeteries and courthouses. I also remember my mother trying to do the same, only to be blocked time after time by the cost and distance of traveling back to Taiwan or the records being inaccessible. After decades of work, we could trace my father’s side of the family back to the 1200s, while my mom’s had only three couples beyond her father’s generation and a handwritten family tree based on her father’s memory.
After making a few brief attempts over the years to do some research on my mother’s side of the family, I decided to truly commit to the work at the beginning of 2022. I made a goal and a promise to set aside ten minutes every morning to work on my mother’s family tree. At first, I had no idea where to begin. I spent my ten minutes quickly and seemingly futilely on Google search after Google search, trying different combinations of keywords and phrases in both English and Chinese in an attempt to find something that sounded like it connected with what little information we had. I sent emails in my halting Chinese to anyone I thought might be able to help.
Those first months seemed fruitless until I realized that somehow I always had something new I could search for or try every time I sat down. I never ran out of options or ideas and could always fill those ten minutes. I slowly learned more and refined my work, until one day I discovered an online database of digitized Chinese family genealogical books (often called jiapu 家譜 or zupu 族譜) that included a Guo 郭 family book that held just a single familiar name – my oldest known ancestor who had immigrated to Taiwan from Mainland China.
From there, the work exploded. I spoke with family history consultants to verify my find, figured out how to document my research properly, and began the painstaking work of learning how to translate classical Chinese records. I am now thrilled to say that my mother’s family tree now contains over 2,400 individuals spanning 20 generations, and the work has still only just begun.
I invite you to join me, either as a Guo 郭 family member who would also like to learn more about our ancestors, or as someone who is hoping to learn more about your own family. Together, we can help each other experience the joy of knowing who and where we came from, in the connection of finding and being found.