NERGC 2021: Meet Nathan Dylan Goodwin
Every genealogist has some kind of specialty. It might be Civil War history, Eastern European ancestry, or even DNA.
I’ve met a lot of fellow genealogists during my 30 years of researching my family history. But meeting Nathan Dylan Goodwin at RootsTech a few years ago felt like an entirely different thing. Nathan had broken into the genealogy world in a wonderful way I had never seen before. It was fresh, and it was new. Nathan is a British internationally acclaimed author. In the genealogy realm, he was newly known for being a genealogical crime mystery author. At that time, he had several books released of a series of non-fiction novels, fondly pegged as the Forensic Genealogist series. The main character of the series was beloved Morton Farrier. Nathan had tapped into a genealogy niche that no one else I had ever met before had.
When I say I “met” Nathan, it would be more accurate to say I participated in a group hello with four other genie friends as we walked the RootsTech Expo Hall that year. We came to Nathan’s RootsTech booth and all introduced ourselves to him. Seconds later, several fans came by to meet him, so we retreated to give him time to give them his full attention. Nathan’s reputation in the genealogy world is that of a talented, personable, and humble man who loves genealogy and loves writing. I was thrilled to be given the opportunity by NERGC to interview him by email for this year’s conference. Nathan will be speaking on the first day of the NERGC conference, April 1.
What came first…a love of writing or a love of genealogy?
Although English was always my favourite subject at school, I would have to say that the love of genealogy came first. The fact that I can combine the two things as my career is a dream come true; there’s no job that I would rather do!
Tell us about your upbringing and how you became interested in genealogy
I grew up in Hastings, on the south coast of England (famed for the battle in 1066), where several generations of the Dengate branch of my family had lived, their having moved there from the surrounding countryside in Sussex and Kent in the late 1870s. I became interested in this side of the family around the age of twelve, I think partly because the locations where they had lived were so familiar to me. Conversely, my other family lines came from slightly further afield (London, Norfolk, Wiltshire, Bedfordshire, Devon, Cornwall). Although these places are still mainly in the south of England, they felt more distant to the twelve-year-old me! Dengate was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name and she was one of those gems we genealogists happen upon rarely, who kept all kinds of family memorabilia going back several generations and who wrote on the backs of her many photographs. She used to walk me up to Hastings Cemetery regularly and show me the graves of my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. I remember spending hours copying out the Dengate family tree, not really knowing what I was doing but enjoying it immensely! I even had the foresight to interview some older relatives but, unfortunately, I asked the wrong questions, focusing more on adding names to the tree. To think that I sat as a fourteen-year-old across from my great-great-aunt, Elsie Dengate, born in 1895, and wasted the opportunity of asking about her Victorian childhood and the lives and personalities of family that she could have remembered—a quality of information that doesn’t show up in genealogical records.
Who or what was the inspiration of the character Morton Farrier?
I actually came up with the name of Morton Farrier during my Media Studies course in the late 1990s. I can’t recall now where I got the name from, but I know I wanted something catchy for the script that I had to write. So, Morton’s first outing was as the title hero of a script for a college project, called ‘Ghosthunter’! The name stuck and, so, when I started my Master’s degree in creative writing, I resurrected the character. He started out loosely based on me, but my tutor on the writing course very wisely advised against that, so he’s become like a very good friend.
Did you write the first book knowing that you would make it a series? How does one tackle laying out so many books at once?
No, when I started the first book on the writing course I actually saw it as a one-off and intended to kill Morton off at the end! My friends, who read the evolving story over the two-year period, talked me out of this ending, ‘just in case’ I should want to write more.
I usually think at least two books ahead of the one that I’m writing, which helps me to work on Morton’s own story, running as a subplot in each book. Right now, I’m working on book nine in the series and I have a very good outline for books ten and eleven, and a vague idea for book twelve. The other advantage of working so far in advance is that the ideas get a long time to ‘simmer’ in my brain and I can then keep an eye out for documents, records, books, etc. that might fit the story way in advance of actually sitting down to write it.
Genealogy is very rarely simple and plain sailing, so we obviously enjoy having a never-ending puzzle to work on.
How difficult was it to break into the genealogy business world?
When I first published Hiding the Past in 2013, I wasn’t consciously trying to make writing my full-time job. I was working as a primary school teacher at the time and trying to write in the early hours before starting work, which simply wasn’t sustainable. Fortunately, the book was received very well by the genealogy community in particular and that enabled me to go part-time as a teacher for a year, and then full-time as a writer after that. I’ve been very lucky.
What do you think draws people to research their family history?
I think it’s two things. Firstly, I think people naturally look to the past as a way of understanding themselves in the present: why they look the way they do; where they got certain personality traits and characteristics; from where abilities and talents might have stemmed; reasons for their geographic location. Genealogy can help to provide those answers. Secondly, I think we’re all armchair detectives and we like a good mystery to solve! Genealogy is very rarely simple and plain sailing, so we obviously enjoy having a never-ending puzzle to work on.
NERGC is a New England regional conference. Have you found if any of your ancestors came to New England?
New England is one of my favourite parts of the world and I’ve visited the area several times, so I was delighted to finally track down my great-grandfather’s brother (who had eluded me for many years) to Vermont. He, Charles Henry Goodwin, and his wife, Minnie, and their two children (imaginatively named Charles and Minnie) emigrated from Lambeth in London to Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont in 1910. I’d been searching for him for so long that I was overjoyed when, in 2019, I found living descendants of Charles and Minnie Goodwin, who sent me several photographs of the family that I’d never seen before. I’ve yet to visit Brattleboro, so I need to book in a research trip and try to track down where Charles and Minnie were buried.
Nathan will be speaking at NERGC 2021 on the first “Gathering Day” at 6 pm EDT. He will be delivering the banquet speech on the subject of “Using Fact in Fiction” which explores some of the real people, places, and records that he has used in his books. For more information on Nathan, please visit his website at https://www.nathandylangoodwin.com/