((This post is also being used for "Beginnings" challenge in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks -- Week one, 2021))
Getting Started
Genealogy, for me, started at a happenchance. I was seven years old, the year was 2000, and I had the brilliant question of, “Nana — did you know any of your Great-Grandparents?” You see, my Nana was my Great-Grandmother…and from what I had gathered at that young age, a general consensus was that not many people were fortunate enough to meet their Great-Grandparents. It was "kind of rarity," as my Mom would put it.
I had known another Great-Grandparent when I was very little but by the time I was seven, I didn’t have many vivid memories of him left. My Mom was fortunate enough to meet three of her Great-Grandparents and even a step-Great-Grandmother. She had very vivid memories of two of her Great-Grandparents, especially. My Dad… he hadn’t known any of his Great-Grandparents. He was lucky to just know his Grandparents considering he was always being bounced around, living city to city as he grew up.
So the burning question of — Nana, did you know any of your Great-Grandparents — my Nana, unfortunately, couldn’t answer the question. She’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s just a few years previous and it was definitely taking a toll on her mental state (or rather, whatever it was, was taking a toll on her mental state). So I asked my Grandma, my Nana’s daughter, if she knew if Nana had known any Great-Grandparents… well, she didn’t know. So I asked her, how could we answer the question? Who could we ask who would know?
Well, I’m not sure who told my Grandma about genealogy - I have the suspicion that it was probably my Great-Uncle Charles, but I could be wrong. My Great-Uncle had done a lot of the Blanford family tree probably twenty years previous so that’s why he comes to mind but it could have been anyone, truthfully. But genealogy is exactly what we took to, to figure out the answer to the question.
We made trips almost everyday to the Henderson County Public Library, up to their genealogy department. The room quickly became one of my favorite places in the world — the smell became one of my favorite smells — the sounds of people shuffling through books, a definite favorite sound.
We took to census records, birth indexes, marriages, and deaths as well. It didn’t take us too long, maybe a year or so, to figure out that…no, my Great-Grandmother had never met any of her Great-Grandparents. They all died long before she was born. My Grandma even realized she’d known one of her Great-Grandmother’s…but really didn’t have any vivid memories of her, hence why she’d forgotten really ever meeting her.
By this point, though, a year had gone by and my Nana had passed away on October 2nd, 2001, at the age of 85. She was predeceased by her parents, husband, a daughter, and two sons. She left behind three daughters and a passel of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Still living was her elder sister and her younger brother. Numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins too.
I have no doubt that my Grandmother conferred with my Nana's eldest sister about genealogy - but how much information she was able to glean beats me. My Nana's eldest sister was Mary Lilly, and Mary only had one daughter - Noretta. I do believe Grandma was able to get some good family tree information from her.
Even though Nana was gone, the genealogy bug had without a doubt sunk its teeth deep into me. I was absolutely obsessed with working on my family tree and learning anything and everything I could about each and every ancestor. I worked mainly on my Mom’s side for the first several years because my Dad really didn’t know much about his side of the family and there weren’t many people willing to talk to me about it. Whereas my Mom’s side of the family was very close-knit and my Grandparents knew lots of stuff about their family. Also a plus side— my mother’s father’s side was Catholic and I would soon learn that Catholic’s keep AMAZING records.
My Dad’s side I was able to piece a little bit together when I was around ten or so years old. My Dad called his Dad’s oldest living sibling - my Great-Aunt Mary - and we were able to go visit her and she gave me some great information on their side of the family. We went out to a couple cemeteries and I got to see the graves of my Great-Grandfather Clint, my Great-Great-Grandparents, French & Lillie, and even my Great-Great-Great-Grandparents, Phylander & Lucy. I felt like a little kid in a candy store… or in a Toys r’ Us at Christmastime.
Genealogy got a little easier as I got a bit older. I was able to get a paid subscription to Ancestry in 2013 and that unlocked a world of documents and records that my library didn’t have — as Aladdin would say, it was a whole new world…and trust me, I was enamored with genealogy all over again. Thanks to having Missouri records at my fingertips, I was able to get further back on my paternal Grandmother’s line. I broke down a lot of brick-walls, but slowly and surely, things simmered down.
Until I did my DNA in April of 2018. Doing my DNA helped me breakdown even more brick-walls that I never thought I’d get past. I am definitely going to talk about those over the course of this narrative and the process of how DNA did break those walls down, not just the end results. I plan to also talk more about those initial genealogy hunts in the library, about my success stories in my own family tree, and also my friends’ family trees. I’ve also had a lot of success in working with their DNA and even found some biological family members they didn’t know about along the way.
So hopefully you all will follow along in my journey and perhaps you’ll end up with the genealogy bug when this is all said and done. One can only hope, ;).
