McGuinness Book Of Records

I wonder if I’m the new Timothy McGuinness. I couldn’t tell you anything about this man. Only that he traveled the thousands of miles from Ireland to Australia during the 1800s and that his name sits atop the family tree I would gaze at while on stays at my grandparents’ house. What happened before him I have no idea and to be honest it isn’t very important to me. What’s important is what I have learned from my family, not where they’ve come from.

Growing up I would often hear phrases from my family such as “You can learn something from everybody.” Little gems of wisdom like this are what I think of when I think about my family history. To me, it is what makes my family history significant. When my mother or grandmother would utter these lines to me, I would ask them where they got them from. The answer was often my great-grandfather. These stories are what have shaped my family history for me. It is what I define my family history as. While many people often define their family history as what country their family has come from or what race they are; I define my family history through its beliefs and values. My view of my family’s history is therefore largely based through memory. Remembering what your family has taught you on what is wrong or right and what is truly valuable in life is what I pride my family history on and what I think others should.

Maybe 200 years from now my name will be sitting atop the family tree of my descendants somewhere in America. Maybe they’ll be able to look at it and trace their family’s roots back to Australia and maybe even all the way back to Ireland. For me, however, this is not important. What is important are the good values that will hopefully be passed down through the generations. That is what has made my family history significant to me and what I hope will make the family history significant to them.

Liam M. -Section 012