I’m amazed I’ve solved most of my family mysteries, some so solid I once decided they were set in stone rather than brick. DNA smashed two, sheer luck demolished another, and kind contacts helped me knock down more. I may be untidy in my daily life (I prefer to say collector or curator) but genealogically, I detest loose ends and, believe me, I can find them when many another would settle for just poking them back into their ring binder. I’m a Gradgrind for facts. They usually lead to stories in my experience.
Inevitably, as a lifelong family historian, I’ve been accused, by the mean and unimaginative, of thinking more of the dead than the living. After a career working with people in library, school, studio and evening class, and a family life full of children, grandchildren, and elderly parents, this patently isn’t true. I take it with a pinch of salt.