Researching your roots can be addictive. Perhaps, that is an understatement. Once the genealogy bug bites so many mysteries open up. The many branches of a family can keep you hunting for years. Maybe I should really say for a lifetime.
My mother and her sisters used to sit around discussing all the stories they could remember of the past. One sister was very good at jotting down and keeping track of the information that was passed along. There were stories of famous ancestors, potential richness and past opportunities missed. I listened but never paid too much attention. It was interesting but I was too busy working and raising a family to get very involved or so I thought.
Shortly after my mother died we attended a family reunion on my father's side in Kerrville, Texas. The topic of the reunion seemed to be centered on family history. I sat at the table and listened to the aunts and uncles talk about their parents and grandparents and the stories they knew. Since this was 1978, it was definitely before personal computers. I was taking notes as fast as I could. After that, I was hooked and almost 36 years later I still find it interesting and challenging. I do have many loose ends on both sides of my family tree and probably always will. After all, records have been lost over time but also other records seem to surface.
Since then, I've trudged through hundreds of cemeteries, made many trips to old court houses, corresponded with long lost cousins, requested birth certificates, death certificates and land records from court houses and visited libraries all over the country. Now a lot of the information I worked so hard on and actually contributed to can be found on the web or in books written by others. However, many times as facts have been passed along, some of them have become distorted. I know because over the years I've provided information but when I saw it in print, it wasn't the same. Thus, much of it isn't quite accurate or is incorrect. However, genealogy does require some "preponderance of the evidence" though and folks do tend to make decisions based on this.
I've always loved history and it is so much more interesting when we can put our ancestors directly in the middle of the stories we have always heard about and studied. Some people say they didn't want to trace their roots because they would be afraid of finding horse thieves or other characters they didn't want to claim. It is much more interesting when you find the ancestor who has a colorful past than those who were honest and hardworking. Every family needs a little spice and thank goodness my family certainly has it. Reading about the hard working pioneer may be interesting but every family a little dirt to make it more interesting. We do have that.
I've often wondered what I would do with all the information I collected. My children really aren't that interested ... yet but who knows what the future will hold. I have discovered that many of the stories and information I have accumulated over the years is getting lost already. Genealogy software charts families. Interesting stories don't always get recorded. So, in addition to all the detailed information and thousands of names still in my files and on my computer, I've attempted to put together a brief summary of some of the notes on my family as I see it and interpret it. They are only my notes.
My first set of notes started with the family of my maiden name. It is my father's family and one with many still unanswered questions. The second set is that of my mother's maiden name. That branch also has many unanswered questions.
Other notes took me back to the time of kings, queens and villains. This was intended to be about the family stories and not about charting families. To list all the charts would be a cumbersome job so those will still remain in my own personal files. I've attempted to put together the hundreds of branches that make me up but I even get overwhelmed with all of that. It's so much easier to stay on track -- one main branch with a few maternal side limbs.
This is my story. It is about me. This is what has been keeping me busy when we're not traveling.
If we know where we came from,
we may better know where to go.
If we know who we came from,
we may better understand who we are.
In the past I've printed a couple of booklets on both branches of my family. The first one I did was in 1983. The second one about ten years later. There are definitely changes as more information has become available. DNA will open different doors for us to discover more about our ancestors in the future.
