An ancestry weekend? Two days of pouring over old documents and crumbling photos, of going down the rabbit hole of names and dates of people whose names I’ve never heard and locating them on our impossibly large and complex family tree?
My sister jumped on the idea. She bubbled with enthusiasm. Preparing for the weekend, she fired up her laptop, scanned and printed pages and pages of old photos, and put together a huge loose-leaf notebook filled with the fruit of the research she’d done on ancestry.com.
Me? I wasn’t so sure. I’d never been good with names and dates. My one bad grade in college was “The History of Western Civilization.” What would I be able to contribute? I imagined lengthy deliberations about where long-dead ancestors belonged on the family tree and boring discussions about the correct name of a third wife or a second husband.
Everyone else was so excited about it though. And it would be a chance to spend time with second cousins I seldom saw. Besides, we were renting a nice house on Warm Beach for the gathering.
Okay. I was in. It might be fun after all.
And … it was. It turned out to be lots of fun.
Ahead of time I knew that I liked my cousins, but a weekend together gave us a chance to get better acquainted and find out how much we had in common besides blood.
Low tide
The setting for our ancestry weekend was beautiful, constantly changing with the tides and sun.
Predictably, we brought way too much food and wine—all of it tasty.
a little snack
We took time off for a couple of beach walks. On one of them we waved at a young man and convinced him to photograph our “family tree.”
And sure enough, we did find some interesting ancestors. This great-great-great-grandfather stole horses for the Union Army—an unusual assignment, I thought. And isn’t that a unique hairstyle?
Someone saved this lock of hair from my great-great grandma. They braided it and sewed it onto this card. If you look closely, you can see a few white hairs mixed in with the dark brown.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that our female ancestors had lots of babies over many years. My grandpa’s oldest sister, for example, was twenty years older than his youngest. Now, in the age of birth control, that seems like a long, long time to have babies around the house.
laptop and old photos and letters
On Saturday morning we got organized and collected memories of my grandpa and his five siblings. Among them, the person who stood out was Great-Aunt Doddy. She had polio when she was nine years old and spent the rest of her long life in a wheelchair. And yet, she was the one we all remembered most fondly. “She was the heart of the family,” one cousin said. And the rest of us agreed.
There must be a lesson there. In fact, there were many lessons to be gleaned from our family’s history–immigrants all, and pioneers.
Before we left, we agreed that we would meet again next summer. And this time I can guarantee that I will be happy to come.
Oh, this is so cool, Nicki. What a great idea and way to get to know your current family better. Making deeper connections through your common ancestors is really awesome. And the place you picked sounds so lovely.
Thank you, Evelyne. It was nice to have so much time with a small group of female cousins. It gave us a chance to get to know each other and our extended families better. You’re right, our common ancestors connected us.
I tried years ago to accomplish the same, with some of my cousins too. But it didn’t turn out so well 🙁
We were stopped quickly due to an ancestor who was an orphan and there was no trace of her parents. Also, in France, fires during the Revolution destroyed lots of buildings where birth certificates were stored. So I’m glad you were able to move forward and have fun too.
After reading your comments and others, I appreciate this weekend and our ability to track our ancestors more than ever.
I am myself still in ancestry research but it is so hard as most was lost due to the war.
Just last weekend I got some valuable documents and pictures from my cousin. Appearently her father tried also to do some research and even started a book. Now my goal is to finish or at least put together all his findings
I think you’re a good one to work on this family project, Timo. Wars make record keeping so much harder. We haven’t had a war on our soil since the Civil War in the 1860s. But we’re a country of travelers and immigrants. My paternal grandparents were immigrants first to Canada and then to the United States. They were too busy trying to survive to take many photos. Gradually, though, we’ve found relatives. My sister traveled to the Orkneys and found people there who knew our great-grandfather.
One thing we can learn from family history is to appreciate how many struggles our ancestors survived so that we could be born.
You’re very lucky to have old photos and a starting place to gather your family history! I remember my brother told me that I was “in charge” of family history, and I’m like ??? I’ve done the best I can under limited circumstances, but I certainly don’t have much to go on. But I’m not complaining, who knows what the future holds? Maybe there will be secrets revealed that will help unlock the past.
It’s nice when someone in the family keeps careful records. Both my mom and grandma among others were diligent keepers of photo albums. After my mom died, my sister took over the photo albums and started scanning the photos. On our “ancestry weekend” we shared stories of the generation that’s gone now. We took notes, and I put them together and sent them to the others. Maybe we’ll do the spouses and/or the children next summer.
Sounds like a grand gathering of the clan!
Are all your cousins female?! 😀
A grand gathering of one branch of the clan, my maternal grandfather’s branch. There are male cousins in this branch, but these female cousins live nearby and they were the ones who were interested in getting together and sharing family stories. The most enthusiastic researcher of this part of the family, a distant relative of ours, is male.
After giving birth to four children, my great-grandmother started sleeping in the other bedroom. That went on for a number of years. But–or so the story goes–at one point great-grandpa started fooling around with other women, so great-grandma moved back into the marital bed and had two more children.
I think I’d start sleeping with a knife after kid number 2 if there was no birth control.
Research into my ancestry revealed that my great-grandmother, Margaret Hannah Houser, died at age 41 on Jan. 22, 1906, only two months after the birth of her last and FOURTEENTH child, Henry Harrison Houser, a stillborn. The poor women back then, how they needed birth control. Either that, or a divorce!
Oh, my goodness! Fourteen children. Life is getting easier and better for us in so many ways, and birth control is one of them.
This sounded like a surprisingly fun weekend, NIcki.
It was, Maureen. Plus, I learned something.
Love, love the Civil War soldier’s hair!!!
It must be intentional. He was posing for a photo, after all.
Sounds like it turned into a great union and reunion of family history.
Yes. It was really fun. Now I’m more interested than before.
Ancestors and a beach! The best of all worlds and then you add in wine and food. You are so lucky. I’ve done a lot of work on my tree but the rest of the family is not all that interested. I wrote a booklet with the main information including where they emigrated from and what living was like back then. Still nada. Not much interest. This winter I will dive back in and keep on going. I have my direct ancestors charted but there are aunts and uncles and a few second marriages to figure out.
What a shame that your relatives don’t appreciate all the work you’ve done. Wow! You’ve even put together a booklet. There will be a time when they or their children wonder about the family, and then they’ll be glad you did all that work. I can see how families keep expanding when you think about all the branches and the spouses and second marriages.
This seemed like an interesting weekend and catchup. Not everyday you explore your family tree and past, and there’s always more than meets the eye. It is quite something to save that lock of hair from so long ago – a DNA sample preserved in time, and quite a lock of hair too. Even the parchment of papers look pretty intact, and so does the handwriting and stamps or illustrations. You got to wonder why some of us like to keep things like these – cards, handwritten letters. I think today some of us still like to keep card and handwritten letters, but more and more of things kept are digital. Maybe this will make tracing ancestries and connections easier in the future…and I wonder how closely attached to things we keep digitally these days.
We can’t save everything, but a momento, carefully chosen, can be a treasure to future generations. Even the handwriting is fun to have.
The digital files of genealogy websites have definitely made it easier to trace our ancestry. It’s a growth industry. I think there are a couple of problems, though, with saving things digitally. #1 We save too much, so who will bother to go through a huge amount of data? #2 When the science changes, it may or may not be easy to convert old digital files into a new format. We’ll see.
Oh Nicki! I’m so glad you went on that weekend with your family. What a lovely time you had, judging by those photos. What wonderful family mementos!
Weirdly enough, I’m writing a picture book that takes place during and after the Civil War. So seeing that photo of your ancestor was inspiring for me!
There are so many Civil War enthusiasts. A picture book should be popular. Good luck to you.
I was told that this great-great-great-grandpa fought in the Revolutionary War. I’m no expert, but doesn’t his uniform look more Civil War, especially the hat?