I think it's a touch sad that so many of our immediate forebears have so little sense of history that they want pretend that nothing happened before a 100 or so years ago.

The old saw of "Those who forget their past, are condemned to repeat it" works in families as well as countries. You might find something out the explains something else. In my case, I have found that despite my father's denial, we have a lot of ministers and other men of the cloth in my family, so my being one is not that unusual.

It's real common for people to want others to be interested in what they are interested in; but the reality is they may not be. There is another thing; your Dad may know more family history than he lets on, and he might not be to proud of it. In my case, some of my family are pretty much hooligans ( horse thieves and moonshiners) around the civil war period, and my aunt glossed over that period of history until I challenged her on it.

My Dad thought it was a riot; right up until he found out that his namesake had been hung for horse thievery and murder. To this day he thinks that the "brushy bend boys" were just a bunch of good old guys on the Missouri frontier, and not a bunch of outlaws who met their end at the business end of a Colt .45.