Genealogy…clues to the past

Genealogy is another form of history, one not necessarily taught in school but one which gives clues to the past, in this case, of a family.

I’ve been involved in researching the various lines of my family and those of my ex-husband since 1982. I have hard copy paper files for every member of each family and computer files, plus a floppy disc back up file for each family. There is still much to be done.

I have found some interesting things about my family through my research, and continue to find more as I step more and more back in time. It is interesting to find out about the times in which your ancestor lived. Many times, while researching in the local genealogy room of a local library, I have caught myself reading about the town and era in which an ancestor lived. You cannot escape history when researching families.

I have found ancestors in several branches of my paternal family line who were involved in early settlements of towns in Massachusetts and the Hartford, Connecticut area.
Some family members are elusive and more difficult to trace than others. Some are easy to find and well documented because someone else has researched them. It is wonderful to find well-documented work already completed on a family.

Of course, it always seems that the family you have the most difficulty finding anything about is the one you most want to know about. I started out in genealogy trying to find out more about my birth father’s family. Of course, that is the one that has the most brick walls and roadblocks.
Then there are the ones you know absolutely nothing about except that they were your ancestors because of information you learned from marriage or death records. But can you find anything about who their parents were or where they were born? Of course not. That would be too easy. I have some ancestors where the death record states “Mother, unknown, father, unknown” or “birthplace unknown.”

This means, of course, that the informant had no idea where the deceased was born or who his/her parents were. Perhaps the person never talked about his/her family so children, who would give the information for the death certificate, would have no idea of their grandparents or where their parent was born.

It’s difficult, but not impossible, to trace an ancestor without knowing some crucial information, but there is help out there if you just keep looking. Sooner or later some small bit of information might lead you to your ancestor when you least expect it.

Genealogy can sometimes be frustrating. Just when you think you have found a clue, it comes up empty. I don’t know how many towns in the Hartford area I’ve written to see if a certain ancestor was born there. He enlisted in the Army during the Civil War in one of the towns but there is no record of him being born there, so I branched out in my search. I sometimes think he dropped here from another planet—well, maybe another state anyway. But where do you look when that happens? Everywhere you can think of.

Genealogy is not just research in libraries or town halls, however—it’s sometimes going to towns to see where your ancestors lived.

Genealogists tell some funny stories about things that have happened to them while doing research, and it can be fun. It can also help you exercise, I’ve found. I have no idea how many cemeteries I have walked while looking for an elusive ancestor’s grave. Sometimes I have been lucky and found them and sometimes not, but it’s always interesting to look at the old stones, which were works of art as well as testament to an ancestor’s vital statistics.

I have been known to kneel in front of an aged stone, my finger tracing the well-worn letters in hopes it is the ancestor I seek. I’ve also been known to jump up and down in excitement in the middle of a long-forgotten family cemetery plot when I have successfully found a long sought-after ancestor’s grave.

I’ve also found some living family members through my search. Through a genealogy ad in Yankee magazine, I found a distant relative on the family line with which I am having the most problems. I wrote her and she has been helpful in supplying some information I didn’t know about the family.

I also found one of my late father’s brothers through my research and have corresponded with him and his wife for several years. A fellow genealogist in Utah, who was helping me with a different family line at the Mormon Library, found them through a phone call in Salt Lake City, where I suspected they lived. They were previously only names to me, but have become very important in my life since that simple telephone call that brought us together after many years.
I found half-brothers and sisters through a letter I wrote to Social Security seeking information about my father.

Genealogy is not all dry bones and dates of birth and death. Sometimes you have the luck to find living people.

When does genealogy research end? Perhaps when you have found all you want to know or when you have found all there is to be known, or it can go on, from one family line to another, with one name leading to others. Each name takes you one more step back in history and supplies another link to your beginnings and who you are.