Climbing Our Family Tree

The writing prompt for week 8 is "Heirloom", and I'm finding this to be a bit of a challenge. (Are you sensing a theme here? It seems like a lot of these writing prompts are challenging!) It's not a difficult subject because I don't own any heirlooms ... rather it's a difficult subject because I have so many things, and they each are things I consider heirlooms. Perhaps it is because I am a self-appointed family historian. Perhaps it is because I tend to be rather sentimental. But I tend to hold onto family items that feel to me as if they just ooze history. Some are simple everyday items. Some are special because of the events they are tied to. Some are special because I love them and the memories connected to them, even if they are more recent than "historical". They are all things that bring me a quiet joy, just because of their existence in my life. For instance, in the category of simple everyday items, I have these things. The doll bel...

The assignment for Week 7 was "Valentine", and it was leaving me a little baffled. I've been incredibly blessed with loving family in my life. I've seen many expressions of love, both big and small, and all of them have shaped my life. I continue to learn from them, and while my knowledge of individual love stories may be scattered, my memories of the love I've seen makes a story of its own. So my first thought was various expressions of love I have seen in family members throughout my life, and how those things have touched me, and shaped my own ideas of love. These expressions of love are worth sharing, and yet in some ways, it isn't something I feel qualified to do. I know bits and pieces of the stories of various family members, but I didn't feel like I know enough about any of them in particular to try and do them justice in the telling. Plus, too many small tidbits from multiple relationships was going to be hard to put together in a readable way. So...

The writing prompt for week 6 (Hooray! I'm caught up!) is "Favorite Name". Favorite name? Do you know how completely impossible that seems for someone who does family history research? To begin with, these folks on my tree are more than names. The more you learn about them and the places and time that they lived in, the more you begin to feel like you actually know them, somehow. So how do you choose between "favorites", when they all have such interesting stories? Like my great-great grandfather with the perfectly ordinary name of George Rogers, but who was the son of William, who was the son of George, who was the son of William, who was the son of George? Or folks with unusual surnames, that left you wondering how their families came to be named Looney, Cross, Smelley, or Hart? On my husband's tree there are names like Dukes, Doom, Craft and Royall. There are place names like Houston and London ... so many to choose from, and all favorites in their own w...

The writing prompt for week 5 is "in the Census". Census records are interesting things. Sometimes they can be immensely helpful. Sometimes they can be immensely frustrating. They have been taken on the Federal level every 10 years since 1790. The information found on them varies from census to census ... the earliest census records (1790-1840) list only the name of the head of household, along with the number of people in the household that fall in certain age brackets. It is only broken out by male/female within those age brackets, and sometimes between "white" and "slaves/colored". So, if you're doing genealogy, you may see something like this, and have to try and make the best of it you can. Fortunately, in 1850 census takers began recording additional information, including the names of each person in the household. Even then, however, information varies widely from census to census. In 1870, columns were added for the birthplace of the indiv...

The challenge for week 4 was "Invite to Dinner". Sounds straightforward enough. Who knew it could actually be so complicated? Who would I invite to dinner? I thought. The person that immediately sprang to mind was my Mother, who passed away in 2014. She is incredibly missed each and every day. I remember listening to folks speak of her at her memorial service, and finding myself wondering if I had ever really known this lady I called Mama at all. I learned things about her then ... and although they were things about her that didn't surprise me, they were just things I never knew, and suddenly was feeling like I has missed out on. I had lived in close contact with her for years on end ... how could I know so little about her? There were so many questions I would have loved to ask, and I was so wishing to hear her voice and her laugh again ... she seemed like an obvious choice. Then I thought of my beloved Grandfather, Glenn. This man was always such a presence in m...

The assignment for week 3 said "Longetivity". Like many of the writing prompts in this series, it can be interpreted in a number of ways. Was it the longest marriage? The longest one family lived in one area? The oldest person in the family tree? Could be any or all of these things. Truth is, though, the first thing I thought of when I saw the word was a person in my husband's family tree. Records of his life, particularly his early life, are sketchy. That's mostly because of the time period when he was born.The truth is, his life is still something of a mystery and a puzzle, despite me trying to revisit my research on occasion and learn more. I "met" him in the most ordinary way, at least for a genealogist. I was tracing my husband's family tree, and since it was in the years before children (B.C. - ha!) we had the luxury of running off to far flung areas to track down records or forgotten cemeteries in search of long ago relatives. We were traveling ...

The assignment for week two said "Favorite Photo", and although I have lots of family photos that I treasure for their subjects, for their age, or for their scarcity, one photo immediately popped into my head. A photo that has always represented the treasured relationship between grandparent and grandchild for me. The woman in the photo is my great-great grandmother, Florence Minnie (Lawson) Zahnd. The child in the photo is my own grandmother, Loyce. Based on my grandmother's apparent age, I'm guessing the photo was taken about 1928 or 1929. The affection between these two is easily seen, and it reminds me a lot of my relationship with my Grandma (Loyce) Rogers. Perhaps that is the reason that learning more about Minnie has always interested me. For a long time, though, her life was a bit of a puzzle. My grandmother's has few memories of her. Apparently when one of Minnie's sons, Walter, lost his first wife in 1928, he brought his house full of children...