The Mayfair Files

Radio201

Ancestral research has become simplified to a large extent because of access to databases around the world. Even if there is no database on one's family line, the Internet has made it possible to connect the dots. In this episode, I talk to a researcher who's been digging up court records, baptismal certificates and patents that leave a paper trail to the Mayflower. Yes that ship that is part of this country's history.

Steve DesGeorges traces his family line to a person on his mother's side who was pivotal in make that journey possible - a man named Edward Cushman. In this podcast I talk to him about his research and where it has taken him. Research and data gathering is not always dry and academic. In the end data helps us construct a bigger picture, or at least a clearer picture. Research should help us uncover the 'story' --the story within the story-- that gets buried over time. Research can moreover be the filter through which we process the present. In this case, the story of immigration, and what it means to be in a new country.

The story is close to me for another reason. I've been digging up my ancestral records from another part of the world, since my ancestors also came on barely seaworthy craft to Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then known as.