This is not your standard family history. This is instead a book about history, and about how the author’s family fits into it. Cockerell has found an interesting way to present this history, by utilizing newspaper snippets, and the writings of famous participants in some of these historical events, and the writings about the famous participants. Then she gets to her family, and can use their own words, as interviews with or letters from family members. She started doing basic family research, but that research took her to a location she did not expect, so then she had to find out why her ancestors ended up someplace she would have never thought to look.
As is not unusual, several of the historical events that impacted her family started many years before, and far away from, where her immediate family ended up. She had to follow the trail backwards, in order for her ancestors’ actions in their own time period to make sense. While the actions started by some of these individuals eventually led to the creation of the State of Israel, there were a few detours on that road that explain her ancestors’ journeys. While most of us know the basic history, there were details that, unless your family was directly impacted, most people are probably unaware of.
Cockerell utilizes several of the most recommended ways to do genealogy – talk to your oldest relatives, read old newspapers, and mine the repositories. The newspapers and repositories helped her learn about the people who impacted her Great-grandfather’s life enough to cause him to move to a new continent, and back again. And of course, these actions caused his descendants to react in certain ways as well. Of course, her grandparents and their siblings all reacted in different ways, but it was with the knowledge of their father’s beliefs and journey in mind.
If this was your family, how would you research them? We forget how our ancestors were affected by everything going on around them, just as we are affected by current events. Cockerell’s family may have been directly impacted more than some, since her Great-grandfather actually met at least one of well-known historical figures she profiles in the first part of the book. And even though we may have been influenced by many of our parents’ choices, we sometimes forget that they were influenced by their parents, and so on.