By Loni Adams Voorhis
Grand Prize winner at the Genealogy section of Miningco.com (now known as About.com).

Genealogy means discovering a past that we can never really know or fathom. Making sense of it and seeing what our ancestors lives were like, and discovering what makes us who we are. It helps us to realize the mistakes that were made and what we can do today to keep them from happening again. Gaining new respect for relatives that have gone before us.

It's more than dates and names. It's learning what they had to go through everyday, just to survive. It's also learning about the history of the world, too. Putting to memory when wars happened, when colonies became states, what circumstances caused certain countries to flee to North America, or other new homes.

Genealogy brings people together for a common goal, in a way that few things can. People who do their family trees seem to find a "kindred spirit" in other researchers. They will go out of their way to help each other - from finding helpful web sites, to suggesting repositories of information that the other may not have thought of.

Anyone who has even breathed a whisper of being interested in researching their family tree to a fellow researcher often finds themselves vaulted into a sea of knowledge they had no idea existed.

Genealogy also encompasses not only a knowledge of the lives of the ancestors, but also their medical history as well, in some cases. Genealogy, for some families, is started when a rare or odd medical problem has sprung up and no one knows where it may have come from. Genetic genealogy has really made some progress in the past few years and has really helped medical technology as well, in some cases. Knowing medical history has helped a lot of families be prepared for something to arise in on-coming generations.

Too, I think our ancestors, cousins, etc., would be pleased to know that we work so hard to discover them and remember them again. We all fear that once we go onto the next life, we will be forgotten. With genealogy out there, everyone gets remembered, at least one more time.

Last but not least, in my search, I have been (among other things) trying to locate my grandfather and uncle on my mom's side of the family. Someone asked me something once that really seemed to encompass everything I've been doing to date. A gentleman wrote me and quoted a fee for finding my lost relatives. He also asked "Are they worth that much to you?" Ever since then, that question has been behind every step I take to discover my past.

I think in genealogy, most any sacrifice you end up making to find that next step is "worth that much." You wouldn't go that far if it wasn't. Finding that missing link, or that little bit of knowledge that you just had to have, for whatever reason, is "worth that much." The tears, frustration, joy, discovery - to me - is worth every minute and every ounce of effort put into it.

It will always be a part of me, and a part of my life.