Leaves on the Tree Rewind: Thankful

During this Thanksgiving week, a little "genea-gratitude" for this hobby I love so much. Enjoy this Leaves on the Tree rewind of a post first published in January 2021.

 

I am thankful I undertook this 31-day challenge of writing about my family history by focusing on a single record each day. It gave my writing a kick start, when it had been stagnated by the ongoing pandemic over the past year.

Researching family history has become a passion over the past several years. It appeals to me because it is the best, most complex puzzle I've ever worked on. The mystery of who our ancestors were is a siren call I've never been able to resist. I love to learn the facts of who was whom, when they were born, etc. 

But it has always been more than a search for names, dates, and places. It's also about the why. The history, context, and details of our ancestors' lives put flesh on the bones of dry fact, and give reason and purpose to who they were, and why they made the choices they did.

I also want to give this knowledge to our children, and our larger family.

I want to give them a sense of the history from which they came—the generations long in this country, like Jim's Mayflower ancestors, his Casey forebears, his two Civil War ancestors—one each from the Union and Confederacy. I want them to know about the widow who homesteaded in Oklahoma; the family who built up Stephenville and Erath County, Texas; the many railwaymen and farmers, and more recently, the lumber businessmen.

From me are the more recent immigrants to the United States: the Croatian and Slovak immigrants who came at the turn of the 20th century, and worked the mines in Western Pennsylvania, as well as the Irish immigrants who worked them in Eastern Pennsylvania. The German farmers who began their lives in upstate New York, emigrated to Canada, and finally came back to Ohio for work. And more railway workers, who toiled long hours at dirty work to put food on the table. 

And the women whose stories always pull me in. Women faded from memory, women not talked about, women whose contributions were overlooked. Women who suffered tragedies, lost babies, battled mental illness. And those closer to me, whom I knew. The strong women who worked lunch counters and factory jobs. Women who raised children on their own. Women who had to make the change from homemaker to breadwinner.

By revisiting the lives of those who have gone before, I understand a little more about myself, and about a collective history. I might better understand the unseen ways I've been shaped—my values, beliefs and tastes.

There are still mysteries and pages of family history not yet discovered. I'll keep looking for them—and writing about them—as long as I'm able. 

Until next time...

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IMAGE: By Deborah Hudson from Pixabay