A recent trip to Melbourne saw me visiting The Avenue bookshop in Albert Park. I was looking for suggestions for my choice for bookclub. I ended up choosing The Book of Dirt by Bram Presser. A few lines before the story begins had me intrigued. Within a few generations almost all of us will have been forgotten. Those who are not will have no bearing on how we are remembered, who we once were. We will not be there to protest, to correct. In the end we might exist only as a prop in someone else's story: a plot device, a golem. It's got me thinking about my ancestors - those people who were most certainly forgotten before I or other members of my family began our research. People who we have rediscovered in census data, old baptismal records, convict records, newspaper articles, shipping records, letters, military records and much more. People who were born, married and died and left no other records to others who have left a plethora of data for us t...