Since I began tracing my family tree last July, I have made many interesting discoveries. The first one was the ancestor who enabled one of my sisters and two of my nieces to get into the DAR. John Preston fought in the American Revolution out of Connecticut. His great granddaughter Clemenza Marilla Mills (my 2nd great grandmother) married Daniel Kenney Wright, who not only fought for the Union in the Civil War, but was eventually put in charge of one of the black units out of Michigan. These are only two of many ancestors and cousins who have fought in wars from early colonial days to the present generation.
Some ancestral connections have been fairly easy to trace online over the past year. Others have proved to be surprising to discover, mostly as I have traced generational ancestor and sibling descendants forward on findagrave.com and other websites. I found Salem witches, their accusers and defenders on different branches of my dad's side. Both President Garfield and his wife were descended from different children of Dad's common ancestor. President Truman and I share a common ancestor on Mom's side of the family.
The most recent discovery happened this week. I was tracing one of Dad's lines forward using findagrave. Suddenly I found a marriage with a Barton. Edmund Barton was Clara Barton's great grandfather. This means that Clara was my fifth cousin five generations removed. She was the founder of the American Red Cross, and headed the organization for twenty-two years.
It's not that I am a fame seeker or name dropper. I think all of my ancestors led amazing lives, for good or ill. It is, however, a nice treat to find someone of note in the tree on occasion. It gives a little added spark to the search for family history that continues to spur my interest. Who know what person of interest I will find tomorrow?
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Dog Days
It's August, and while it's my birth month, it's also one of the hottest months of the year. When the monsoonal flow shifts far enough from Arizona, it's also one of the most humid months of the year. I am soooo not a summer person, so you can imagine how much I hate summer. The only thing worse than the hot sultry days of summer are summer in January days.
It's not all bad. The Dodgers and Angels are fighting the Giants and A's for their respective National and American League divisions, and are both currently leading, but not by much. School is about to start, which means that college football is about to get underway. Go Trojans! Go Bruins!
I checked out the Wikipedia article about dog days. Evidently the term goes back to Greco-Roman times and the preoccupation with Sirius the Dog Star. It was the brightest star, and rose just before the sun, leading the ancients to associate Sirius with the hottest days of the year. Romans even sacrificed red dogs in April in an attempt to appease the gods and keep the summer temperatures down. Good luck with that.
One thing I always liked about summer was that it is also vacation time. I've done a lot of traveling in the summer. Growing up, we spent every other summer traveling to Missouri and Minnesota to visit Mom and Dad's families. Because of the triangular nature of the route, we went by different roads coming and going. As a result, we saw much of the country west of the Mississippi River before I graduated high school. From the major parks like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore to the small oddities on Old Route 66, we experienced a great deal of this great country in various station wagons. Sometimes we stayed in motels, but as the family grew--given that there were five of us kids squeezed into the car--we used tents and sleeping bags. I was twelve or thirteen when we got that tent, and it got a lot more use in the alternate summers when we camped out at the beaches and the California parks.
In Missouri we usually stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Passley in Alba. In Minnesota we generally stayed at the family farm outside Brainerd. We were able to visit around the family in both places, and in Minnesota there were often school and/or family reunions, which drew the family from across the country. I've seen some of the cousins as adults in more recent years. We definitely have changed over the years!
It's not all bad. The Dodgers and Angels are fighting the Giants and A's for their respective National and American League divisions, and are both currently leading, but not by much. School is about to start, which means that college football is about to get underway. Go Trojans! Go Bruins!
I checked out the Wikipedia article about dog days. Evidently the term goes back to Greco-Roman times and the preoccupation with Sirius the Dog Star. It was the brightest star, and rose just before the sun, leading the ancients to associate Sirius with the hottest days of the year. Romans even sacrificed red dogs in April in an attempt to appease the gods and keep the summer temperatures down. Good luck with that.
One thing I always liked about summer was that it is also vacation time. I've done a lot of traveling in the summer. Growing up, we spent every other summer traveling to Missouri and Minnesota to visit Mom and Dad's families. Because of the triangular nature of the route, we went by different roads coming and going. As a result, we saw much of the country west of the Mississippi River before I graduated high school. From the major parks like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore to the small oddities on Old Route 66, we experienced a great deal of this great country in various station wagons. Sometimes we stayed in motels, but as the family grew--given that there were five of us kids squeezed into the car--we used tents and sleeping bags. I was twelve or thirteen when we got that tent, and it got a lot more use in the alternate summers when we camped out at the beaches and the California parks.
In Missouri we usually stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Passley in Alba. In Minnesota we generally stayed at the family farm outside Brainerd. We were able to visit around the family in both places, and in Minnesota there were often school and/or family reunions, which drew the family from across the country. I've seen some of the cousins as adults in more recent years. We definitely have changed over the years!
Friday, August 1, 2014
It's My Birthday!
Another year has come and gone. Where does the time go? I'm getting closer to "retirement", but am keeping busy with Meals on Wheels and my genealogy when I'm not at work. This is actually the majority of my time at present, since I'm currently oncall while the business is so slow. At least I'm able to collect unemployment for the time being.
Yesterday I read a blogpost on the Genealogy With Valerie blog. It was titled "I Thought I'd Have More Time!" She talked about all the time we spend on digging back into our family history, thinking we'll have time "later" to write down our own stories and the stories of our loved ones. That doesn't always happen. Her husband developed a rare form of dementia about five years ago. He's only 51 today. All those stories he told her about his early life--so many times she thought she'd never forget them--are fading fast, and she's now having to reconstruct the stories with the help of her husband's family. Those memories are all buried somewhere in his mind that he--and she by extension--can no longer reach.
This has been a real wakeup call for me. Over the years since Dad's death, I have recorded some of Mom's stories in one of those memory question books that you can buy. I think we're up to October questions. I need to do more in the coming year, because you never know how much time you really have. I certainly can't ask Dad anymore--he died in 1998. Sometimes it seems like forever, sometimes it could have been yesterday, except that I see my eighteen year old niece Brianna sitting across the room from me. She was two when her Grandpa went to heaven.
Maybe it's time to get her recording her life story.
Yesterday I read a blogpost on the Genealogy With Valerie blog. It was titled "I Thought I'd Have More Time!" She talked about all the time we spend on digging back into our family history, thinking we'll have time "later" to write down our own stories and the stories of our loved ones. That doesn't always happen. Her husband developed a rare form of dementia about five years ago. He's only 51 today. All those stories he told her about his early life--so many times she thought she'd never forget them--are fading fast, and she's now having to reconstruct the stories with the help of her husband's family. Those memories are all buried somewhere in his mind that he--and she by extension--can no longer reach.
This has been a real wakeup call for me. Over the years since Dad's death, I have recorded some of Mom's stories in one of those memory question books that you can buy. I think we're up to October questions. I need to do more in the coming year, because you never know how much time you really have. I certainly can't ask Dad anymore--he died in 1998. Sometimes it seems like forever, sometimes it could have been yesterday, except that I see my eighteen year old niece Brianna sitting across the room from me. She was two when her Grandpa went to heaven.
Maybe it's time to get her recording her life story.
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