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
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