![the family secret the family secret](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JF7E5n0-PjU/mqdefault.jpg)
Sometimes a simple keyword search can reveal a bombshell.Īs Anne writes, “I just did a search for our farm name in Trove and it spiralled out of control from there.” Jenny also wrote that when dates didn’t correspond between family stories and official documents, “I would just type in a relative’s name to see if anything popped up. Diving into Trove’s rich collections of digitised newspapers, photographs, letters, diaries, and links to research materials around the country, people are finding missing pieces in the family stories that tell us who we are. In a 2016 survey I conducted of people researching their family histories, 58 out of the 400 respondents cited Trove as the place they discovered a family secret. He left the room huffing, “The past is the past and should stay there.” But as Allison writes, “This was all prior to Trove.” Older family members deflected questions, and her grandfather, when asked, got angry. When older generations pass away, we realise there are questions we didn’t know to ask, or were too afraid to.Īllison* began research to help her mother find out where her grandmother was buried and how she really died. But very often there are silences in families, information that is forgotten or withheld.
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We overhear a hushed conversation or catch gossip from an in-the-know family friend. Parents and grandparents tell tales around the dinner table and on long trips. We might assume the stories we know about our families are inherited from past generations.