My dad started me off - he has been huge into genealogy for a long number of years, and has given me most of the information he has, but I have questions about certain lines and branches that I need to go off on my own search to figure things out. He has also entrusted me with a wealth of photos that leave me with tons and tons of questions.
How can you substantiate family stories that you’ve heard all your life about something that happened 100 years ago or more? I’m not talking things that one can eventually find on a paper deed, or a courthouse record, but a rumor, like the one about Jesse James. There’s been talk all my life, that my great grandfather (I think he was the one) had a secret basement in which he hid his buddy Jesse, when posses were a-ridin’throughout northern Missouri. Cool, cool story, but how does one substantiate it? Everyone that knows is long gone, but could there be a newspaper report or something in a memoir someone wrote?
Even when there are records, so to speak, there’s the looseness of them. I have an ancestor from North Carolina who lived to be over 120 years of age....or 115....or maybe 100. Depending upon what information you find, ol’ Robert could have been any age, but one thing is for sure – the man was quite the character if even half his autobiography is true. What I’d give to spend a few hours with the dude, even with the ego he seemed to have.
You can’t depend upon the word of those involved either. My maternal grandmother was known to stretch the truth she didn’t know. For years I thought I was a descendent of Isaac Watts, the English hymn writer (she said he was her grandfather.) Only after starting research did I find that her mother was born in 1870, and the man my grandmother claimed was her mother’s father died in 1748, unmarried and childless. At least I no longer feel guilty about not enjoying some of those stodgy, old hymns of Isaac’s. I did finally get a photo of my great-grandfather’s fish and chips shop in Sutton Bridge, England, however. That was neat.
My paternal grandmother however, tickled me to no end when she revealed that her mother, my great grandma Maggie, met her husband Earl, when he was a comedian in a burlesque house and she was the piano player there. Oh, the stories I missed not knowing that little tidbit until 30 years after Grandma Maggie died. In the same family, Bud Ledbetter, the famous Oklahoma territory marshal known as The 4th Guardsman, was a cousin of my great-grandfather Earl. There’s a lot of info out there about Bud, including a book I own. Now that’s cool stuff to read and know it’s all about kinfolk. My fifteen minutes of fame, so to speak.
A friend of mine and I have a theory about roots. We say we’re drawn to the type of life our ancestors had. Both of us came from long lines of rural people. Country folk. Farmers. Small shop keepers. Small town dwellers. She and I are both happiest and most comfortable in those type settings, and cringe at the thought of big cities and large urban spots. My husband, on the other hand, has ancestors from super large cities in Europe, and he can’t stand the quiet life. He needs the hustle and bustle of the cities, and the people, and the noise. When he went to New York City for the first time a few years back, he came back saying he’d move there in a (pardon the phrasing) New York minute. I, on the other hand, have no desire to ever even get close, so needless to say, we don’t necessarily agree over vacations and retirement. He prefers noise, hustle, bustle, bright lights, and lots of people, while I tend more to a stack of books, a comfortable chair, plenty of trees and flowers, a glass of red, and a body of water where I can watch my son fish.
Considering my husband and I both grew up within 50 miles of each other, I’d say genetic imprinting has more of a hand in our likes than does environment. He yearns for a place far larger than the million and a half people metropolitan area we live in/near, and I long....no...I yearn for something about 1/1,000th of that size. Mayberry, if you will. If we could only win the Powerball we could afford to retire in both places. Well.....kinda. He’d be welcome to come visit me anytime, but no way am I going to NYC to see him. A girl’s gotta keep to her roots.
