The hunt begins

Many years ago my sister and I had a passing interest in finding out some family history information. This was *gasp* prior to the age of the internet and searchable databases. We quickly realized we didn’t have two things necessary to make this search feasible….Time and Money. You needed to go to the information, not the other way around. Our interest quickly fizzled since we knew that this was more than we bargained for.

Fast forward about 15 years. My uncle offered to make a copy of his cousin’s family research. Done the old fashioned way. Dusty, musty records; old courthouses; endless searches through family papers and library holdings to find any scrap or shred of information about the family. I appreciate the depth and breadth of Dee’s findings. She was clear, concise and most importantly perhaps, correct. She gave me a wonderful place to start but I still wasn’t ready. I put the 3 inch folder in a stack of other papers on my computer desk and really didn’t give it much thought until a few years later.

Inspiration comes from the most unexpected places

About six years ago, when I was still riding the corporate carousel, we had a young man come in as a new hire. Quincy and I didn’t become friends straight away but I liked him at once. I could tell he was much less edgy than most young men his age and he already had a family to whom he was very much devoted. Learning more about him as time went on he told me he was Mormon. I related a story to him about spending time in the Family Center in Florida doing searches way back in the day. He kindly listened and then asked, “Who are you researching right now?” Nobody. Nada. Zilch.

Why Not?

He had asked me this question and it just hung there. I batted my eyes and I am sure that he heard nothing but crickets. “Well, I’m not sure. Really I don’t know where to begin. Or even how to begin” I lamely replied. He put me on the spot but encouraged me to give it another go and assured me that searching methods had changed dramatically. He warned me that depending upon my methods it wouldn’t be easy or cheap but that it was feasible. I should just give it a shot and that with all of the information that I already had due to the cousin’s work I was WAY ahead of the curve. But he also told me that it could be addictive.

Thanks for the warning!

So, where do I start? How about at the beginning. I signed up for an Ancestry.com subscription and decided to enter myself as the home person and then work through cousin Dee’s research. I thought to myself that I was really pretty adept at data entry and that I would have no issue entering these family data sheets in one weekend or maybe two if I drug it out.

What the hell was I thinking!?! Nearly six months later I finally finished inputting all of the information contained on these sheets. They are deceiving little creatures. I never realized how much information that you can cram onto one page of paper. And don’t forget the back. She never failed to add additional information to the back. Parents of both spouses, then the spouses and then their offspring and then their spouses and hope each generation only had one spouse! Truth is, I just didn’t do the math. Forgetting that each individual’s ancestors increase exponentially until the whole thing explodes. Well, not really but I know I have felt like that sometimes. One relative leads to another and then another and another….as the mister says it is like falling down the rabbit hole.

Hook, Line and Sinker

By this point I was totally enchanted about the whole prospect of family research. Finding such things as being the descendant of  Brigadier Samuel Thompson who was one of the founders of Bowdoin College in Maine. Being a Mayflower descendant, having ancestors in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Having ancestors that while they weren’t necessarily notable or famous, they are my forebears.They all have life stories and I want to know them.

From the strangest places

When first beginning on this family history journey, I learned to search message boards for anything that might be pertinent. I came across a posting that said her childless cousin had passed away leaving a large box of photos mostly of the J family of Iowa. It instructed the reader to contact her with details of relationship and she would be happy to ship the photos to someone who might be able to identify these pictures and take care of them. I had to rub my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, I bet I scanned the computer screen a half a dozen times to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. The post was nearly 5 years old! Oh….fingers crossed that the email still works, that the photos aren’t destroyed or claimed, that the person in possession is still living.

Holding my breath

Within the hour I had a response to my email. Yes, I still have the photos. Yes, I see how you are related. Yes, I will ship them to you.

I waited impatiently by the mailbox thinking that it would be a small box like what someone might give with a tie or a wallet. What arrived was a box that would hold twelve dozen boxes of eggs. I could barely contain myself. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to open the box but I really wanted to share the moment with the mister. I thought he would never get home from work, I mean, didn’t he know what was happening here?

One by One

I let him open the box. Damn I love that man. He handed the photos off to me one by one. Some we knew. Some we didn’t. Some we learned who they were later and some are still unidentified. But what a treasure trove. A gift. A priceless treasure of bibles, baby books, autograph books, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings and on and on. But the one photo that made us both stop in our tracks was when the mister pulled out my mother’s high school graduation photo. Wow!

My mother in center; above left, her father as a boy; above that her father as a teenager; directly above, her great uncle; above right, her great-grandmother and grandmother; upper right her grandmother, great grandparents and great uncle. Her grandfather was a photographer in a small Iowa town circa 1890 and several of these were taken by him.