Yes I'm borrowing the title of my new favorite show.... Finally something on tv that interests me besides cooking and kids ....but really, who are you? Where did your PEOPLE come from? Do you know? Do you care? To some it is not important, To ME? It's HUGE!
Yes this
creamy white skin,
green eyes and
blonde hair =
English, French, German, Dutch, Swiss, Swedish, Scottish, I am many races, probably more but I just haven't them found yet, but for the most part - every race that prevents me from getting a good tan! You know how lobsters are red? Yes that would be me after a few minutes in the sun. Funny part of that is that my family and friends LOVE to point out the fact -
"you are SO RED!" Yes, thank you, my burning skin told me that all ready....
So...What was your Grandma's name, and what about her parents, and their parents, and their parents.....where did they live, how did they die, when? Where are they buried? How many kids? Are you confused yet? Overwhelmed? Don't feel bad...that happens. It's easy to get lost in the layers and branches - and it can also be overwhelming and a bit depressing as I found out recently.
I've been researching my genealogy for several years now...now don't picture a desk full of dust and old books and documents and me peering over old papers with a magnifying glass...most of my work has already been done for me and is well documented via the internet and on discussion pages, websites, and emails from several "kissing cousins". Even a book written by a cousin long ago.
While knowing the names, cities and dates can be quite satisfying, what I really want is to talk to these Grandmas, I have so many questions! Questions that must remain unanswered till a much later date. (Hopefully) It took a visit from my Mother to clarify that ~ late one night as I lay awake, fretting over my questions for these marvelous women that came before me - Mom's voice came through loud and clear, "stop worrying so much about this genealogy stuff, it will all come out in the wash and you will have your answers someday"...just like a Mom, there when I needed her.
Finding out that I was related to Abraham Lincoln (we share a Grandmother back 10 generations, Mrs. Penelope Stout) and
Richard Nixon? I don't care who you are that is just funny! From two different sides of the family of course....One of the most beloved Presidents our country has ever seen....the other, not so much.
One of my other notables was Governor John Endecott (c. 1588 – 1665), first Governor of Massachusets Bay Colony. Quite the tyrant judging by his picture...check him out! Maybe he was a good looking dude for his time?
More recent in time - I will guesstimate around the 1850's there was "Aunt Til" no picture of her unfortunately, who smoked cigars, drove a wagon team of horses and ran a boarding house somewhere in Ohio ~ definitely a woman ahead of her time! Story has it that my Great Grandfather's family would say "Oh dear! Shut the curtains, Aunt Til is here!" Wouldn't that be great to sit and have some tea with her, or perhaps coffee and Jack Daniels?
Wonderful findings, but the part that interests me most is the long line of Grandmothers and there are hundreds of them from all over the place...as I sat with two sick children a few weeks ago in the middle of the night...my sleep deprived brain drifted back hundreds of years, back to the names and dates I had been researching....how did they DO IT? With so many children, the laundry, the sewing, the cooking? Thinking back to the 1600's - being new to America, what kind of conditions must they have faced? Reading those names and dates and seeing 12 children born, one every year! Can you imagine having at least 3 children in diapers - and not really "diapers" like we know them to be? I suppose with all those other children though there would be a lot of help. There would have to be! My Grandmothers would be married by 17, have children for the next 25 years and be dead by their 50's or earlier.
The sad part of these stories which finally caused me to take a break from research for a bit - looking at the names, the dates and the children was the very sad fact that many children and Mothers died. Some babies only lived a couple of months, or years. Several of my Grandmothers lost multiple children....as I sat in the night with my two sick girls, thinking of how they did the same thing with their babies...only sometimes their babies died. It broke my heart.
One of the saddest stories was of my Great, Great Grandmother Martha...married at 20 and had 8 children - they moved from Illinois to Colorado because of a land grant. Which apparently was quite popular in those times. Not long after she they moved she became ill with some type of heart ailment. Martha died at age 38, leaving behind 8 children and their father to face life in a new place - here is the only family photo I have of them, not a very good copy but I found it on the internet through some cousins, our copy was destroyed years ago in a house fire, how lucky was I to find this gem?
I suspect she died not long after this picture was taken. Grandfather Solomon remarried several years later, the children went on to do good things, some surviving to old age...some not, but quite the upstanding family who built churches and schools in the new community. That's my Great Grandfather Arthur there in the back row on the left...he became an amazing contractor, helping to build the First United Methodist Church in Lodi, California and he also was an accomplished Vintner with acres and acres of grapes. Arthur married Emma Glick in the late 1890's and my daughter is named after her. It seemed nice to connect to the earlier generation in some way.
So what about your family? Go find your interesting stories, the names, the dates...the skeletons!
Oh I didn't mention the skeletons? Well the family folklore of Indian blood that was supposed to come from Martha! Can't prove it on paper...can't say if she looks Indian or not but I was told she was a "half breed" - my dream is that someday I will pay $200 and have the DNA swab test and see just exactly what breed of cat I really am!
Here are a few of the websites I use for research ~ Get going! Maybe we are even related!
www.familysearch.com
www.genforum.com
www.findagrave.com
Happy Searching!
