I must admit, I always loved scavenger hunts. Looking for my ancestors is no different. I love the hunt. I love the work. I love the research. Despite the twists and turns, the misspellings, the marriages, the moves, the immigrations, the maiden names, etc., I feel a sense of accomplishment when I actually find something that I know with certainty belongs to my history.
I discovered a piece of information that I’m very grateful to have discovered before GN and I got on the road again. Some of my relatives are buried in a cemetery that has undergone a name change since they were interred. Good to know . . . or I’d have to be knocking on doors in that little town asking who moved the cemetery and where they put my family. The cemetery name change means the church underwent the same change as well. AND that means my mother (Gr8) got married in the same church as some of the great-greats, despite the historical records showing different information.
I like that.
What I like the most, though, is telling stories to my mother that she didn’t know and introducing her to great-greats – even if only in names. So far, I have traced her family back four generations beyond her mom and dad.
In addition to telling stories to my mother, I can share those stories with Goodnight and show her how deep the roots are. It may help her get through the rest of her ‘Julys’ a bit more comfortably.
GN and I are planning a longer road trip in the not to distant future. We can’t do this one in a day because it’s a much longer drive. There is a there is a heritage festival we’re planning to attend and it’s in the vicinity of some of the places where the family tree has rooted. I’m busy printing maps of the little towns GN and I need to visit and the locations of their respective cemeteries, (there are four.) The visits will happen at some point this summer, but I want to do all the work ahead of time that I possibly can. I just want to take enough flowers . . .
I wish I could get to some of the places my ancestors lived, but the leap was made from the midwest and south to California several generations back. I guess the first thing would be to visit the California places, and then start moving east.
Trav: Maybe you’ll get the chance to move east to see them some time. But I’m starting with the folks who are closest to me, too, but after Wisconsin, I don’t have any further east to go, except overseas. That will be a while for me.