Memory Monday: My Family Just Got A Whole Lot Bigger

My paternal great-grandfather

MY FAMILY JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT BIGGER

Growing up, I knew the names of all my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I didn’t think about the generations that came before me. But after I married, my husband had great-grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles that were still living and that he knew. Shortly after wee married, his grandmother gave us a quilt that had been made for her mother and contained the names of several generations of her side of the family. My husband even had a book that a couple of his great-uncles had researched and put together tracing the family back to the first of the family that came to America in the early 1700s. Later, I remember talking to my father about his ancestors, but I failed to ask the right questions, so I didn’t get names, dates, or states where they came from. When he passed away, all that information went with him.

Years later when our daughter was in her early teens and we got internet, she and my husband would search the different sites, tracking back his side of the family. I tried it for a little while, but since I didn’t have enough information, it was hard and I got discouraged, then quit.

Again years later after my mother passed away, I found my paternal grandfather’s delayed birth certificate among her papers. And as we all know, it listed his parents’ names. This was astounding! I never knew what their names were. Also among those papers was a death notice which listed his late brother and where he had been born.

With this information, I got on the computer and did a quick search. In the free 1880 census, I found them!!!! My family (well, of course my grandfather hadn’t been born in 1880) were now names and dates, not some unknown cloudy shadows drifting about in the mist of history.

In this burst of enthusiasm, I started researching the rest of my ancestors. Through the years, we subscribed to Ancestry and I have been able to trace back three branches of my parents’ families—two for my mother (they were Mennonites and well-documented) and one for my father (his mother’s side was also well-documented). But I could only go back as far as my paternal great-grandfather. I researched and researched, but could find anything that I could connect to. I eventually found a family that there might be the next generation back. But try as hard as I could, I couldn’t make a definite connection (and if I was going to do this, I wanted it to be right).

Then last night—when I couldn’t sleep (now I’m not saying it was because my husband was snoring, let’s just say I had been drinking too much coffee earlier), I got on the computer and started looking again. Suddenly, it was there! A second or third cousin, probably several times removed, had my paternal grandfather’s family listed, and it went back to 1520. WOW!!! I’ll not say I screamed in my excitement, after all my husband was still sleeping. But my family had just increased by whole lots—and I had the names with their birth, marriage, and death dates to prove it.

I now know when all parts of my family came to America and where they come from. This is wonderful information that I can pass down to the generations that come after me.