It started out innocently enough. I was trying, yet again, to locate an old friend who moved to California a couple of decades ago. Not finding him through the usual sources (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), I figured I’d peruse our local auditor’s website to see if his father still owned property in the area. Only one listing came up with his last name and a little more investigation showed that home ownership had transferred back in 2000, shortly after the man I thought might be my friend’s father had passed away.
“Ok,” I thought, “what would Nancy Drew do?” I smiled to myself and started looking for an obituary. If it indeed WAS my friend’s father, there might be mention of where my friend now lives.
Alas! My local paper only archives its obituaries online back to September 2000. The man I was looking for passed away in June of that year. But I knew that I’d located obits online before; I recalled reading my grandfather’s online not long ago. Damned if I could find where I saw it, though. As a last resort, I signed up for a trial membership to Ancestry.com.
And that’s where it all went to hell.
I don’t know how I actually ended up starting to document our family tree. I started with myself and my parents, and added my sons and my husband. Then I cursed the program for not letting me add the boys’ sperm donor biological father without somehow connecting him to me as a spouse. Dear God, NO! I refused his half-hearted proposal when I told him I was pregnant. (Coming, as it did, on the heels of “Are you sure it’s mine?” Oh, so romantic.)
But I digress.
I have an aunt on my father’s side who has painstakingly researched the history of our family all the way back to our relatives in Europe. That became even more clear when I entered my paternal grandfather’s name into my family tree and it immediately called up the names, along with the dates of birth and death of his parents.
On my mom’s side, however, I know next to nothing. My maternal grandfather died six years before I was born. My great grandmother (my maternal grandma’s mom) was in a nursing home with dementia by the time I was old enough to know who she was. Everyone else was already gone, save for a few great aunts and uncles, most of whom I never met or saw frequently enough to make a family connection.
My grandfather apparently lived a hard life, and his parents gave him little or no affection. As a result, he didn’t really keep in contact with his side of the family, effectively cutting off any bonds that might be forged in later generations. It’s sad enough that there are probably cousins galore out there that we’ve never met, but the thing that really bothers me now is that my mom and her brothers can’t even tell you the names of their ancestors. My dad can tell you who is who for at least two generations above his own parents. But I had to trigger my mom’s memory for her grandmother’s first name.
I was up until 3 a.m. Friday night, chomping at the bit to tell someone, ANYONE, that I had just located an online newspaper archive containing my great grandparents wedding announcement in 1907. Every five minutes, I can be heard muttering to myself, “This is so COOL!” Even my kids think so. And my mom? Well, let’s just say that as much as we tease her about her memory fading… the conversations we’ve had over the past few days have triggered a lot of memories. And I’m pretty sure she’s enjoying the discovery as much as I am.
So, I admit it. I’m hooked. I love a good mystery, after all, and it’s high time I figured out the other half of my origins. If not for my sake, for the sake of the generations yet to come.
