Begat.

When I was a child attending Christian elementary school, we did a big musical every spring (always something Bible-related) and one year, one of the songs went, "Begat, begat, begat, that's genealogy; begat, begat, begat, that's where it's at." I remember nothing else about the play whatsoever, but that little earworm has stayed in my brain for 30+ years.

The song refers to various passages in Scripture that list the lineage of Jesus through the centuries. So-and-so had a kid, who had a kid, who had a kid...in the words of the King James Version, he "begat" a kid. He reproduced, he spawned a child, he (never a she, by the way, even though the "she" is integral to the whole thing) brought a person into existence.

When I was thinking about what to name my genealogy blog, the earworm made its way back into my brain. It seemed like a great title, since reproduction is the basis of genealogy. Where would we be without the begats?

I've dabbled in genealogy since I was a kid, thanks to an innate interest in history and two grandmothers who passed along their passion, their photos, and their memories to me. I hadn't done too much with it since the late 1990s, and then last year my brother asked me an ancestral question that got me digging through my folders, which sparked a whole new interest. In the time since I'd last done any genealogy work, the Internet had boomed, and resources my grandmothers could only have dreamt of were literally at my fingertips.

And so I am "begetting" this blog. My goal is to share, in a very informal way, some of my adventures in genealogy.