I just got back from the post office after turning over another stone in what I see as a hunt I’ve been on off and on for all of my life.
Nearly 70 years ago, for reasons that are another story which I might get into some other time, my side of our family lost touch completely with another side of our family. A few years back, after long searching but somewhat by chance, I located my mother’s cousin, part of the side of the family we’d lost touch with. Unfortunately, she was a number of years older than my mother and had died not too long before I’d found her. I spoke with her step-daughter but she couldn’t tell me much about other family members. That’s another story which I may tell some time. Have I mentioned that this seeing everything as a story is an Irish characteristic?
I’d thought that trail was cold. However, a few months ago partly by chance, partly by the clever searching by one of my sisters, and partly as a product of my own tenacity and, shall we say, lack of timidity, I located several members of the side of the family with which we’d lost touch. I had very cordial telephone conversations with two of these long-lost cousins. You can imagine my delight when you understand this this was the first time in my life I’d ever spoken with a cousin (a first cousin, anyway). Through these conversations I realized that in all likelihood I knew considerably more about our family history than they did.
This afternoon I sent off by mail some copies of pictures of their grandparents they’ve never seen before along with a CD containing a lot more and a little family tree showing what I’ve learned about that side of the family through my researches. We’ll see what happens. I suspect they wonder what I’m up to, what I want.
The answer is nothing. I think that these trifles are an important part of their heritage and their children’s as they are of mine and I want to share them, spread the knowledge, re-tell the old tales. In my dreams I hope for some shred of knowledge I don’t already have, a picture, a story. Far-fetched but just barely within the realm of possibility.
Every family has to have at least one family tree nut, don’t they? As a budding genealogist, standing on the hard work of uncles on both sides of my family, I think what you are doing is like planting an actual tree. You may not be around to enjoy it yourself, but I’m sure somebody will.
In my family the nuts probably outnumber the rest about 10 to 1. We’re, well, eccentric.
Well, I’ve just been thinking “no ideas but in stories,” so . . .
Good luck in your searchings. One of my father’s cousins in Great Britain is trying to do the same thing with our family tree – she traced it back to about 1800 before hitting a snag (a bastard, with no mention of who the father was), and she’s come across several indicators of where our family name might have come from (including a road named after us), but it’s long and arduous.
I tried some of that with my mother’s side, which was much more fruitful – my mother’s ancestors apparently wandered all over western Germany for the past 300 years, including in Westphalia and the like.
My father died in 1997. At one time he lived in California and was married out there. Dad who was born in New York served in the Navy during WWII and lived in California for at least 2-3 years after his discharge from the Navy.
I know he had at least one child from that marriage. Dad kept all this close to himself, but I got to know bits and pieces. I think(90% certain) he was related by marriage to former NFL QB John Brodie.
When Dad died, I had no way of contacting any family he had in California. I may have half siblings alive and well somewhere. Its a shame, but barring my meeting John Brodie and asking if he ever knew somebody with my uncommon last name, I probably won’t ever get to know them.