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While we have knowledge of over six hundred relatives most were basically educated, none were hung from a tree, and few entered politics or would be considered "members of structure". They did some interesting things: the acre donated for the country church was eventually given back to my grandfather, along with the buildings.
We had four languages and my son writes four of them, but it missed my and my parents generation. The same thing happened in our homestead community. Life was HARD, and the last thing you ever thought was that someone with a TV crew would find "homesteading" romantic and viewable. Right.
1} many did not know how to read and write...we take that for granted, now.
2} many did not keep a written record except maybe in the family Bible. Many did not have to construct family trees, IF they COULD read/write.
3}memory fails people as they age. I asked my living aunt about my mother's family an she only knew of her up to her grandparents. SHe said she had more written down, but no idea where?
4} generations advanced faster and shorter, that is people didnt live as long .
5} MANY came here FLEEING from something and cut ALL TIES to the "old homeland". For example, Australia was originally a colony of UK/Brittain's criminals!
6}Many knew they were NEVER going to ever see family again,and memory of who's who in the old country gets forgotten.
7} EVen knowing who is who it is hard to track beyond certain points in history as mass inability to read/write/care about genealogy took its toll!
8}some family names, histories were changed upon immigrating. That is why there are often multiple spellings of the same name...many were changed to how it sounded, not how it was spelled. making it hard to trace.
so, it is with much consternation that we find family history a mystery.
I have come to the conclusion that little is passed down in many families because of shame. My mom told me when I was 26 years old that her father was Jewish and that I was not to say anything about it as most of her sisters had not told their kids. My parents were not anti-Semitic but the explanation was that my mom would not have been accepted by the Jewish community or the non-Jewish community so they kept it quiet. It explains so many odd things about my family.
To illustrate how long this silence can go on, my cousin , now the senior cousin of the pile of us, just wrote me about her mom dying. I wrote back, told her about the research I was doing on the family and invited her to be a guest on my tree. We arranged to get together this week whereupon she did tell me that she had no idea about the Jewish roots and that it was particularly funny to her as her husband is Jewish. Both her father and her mother (my mom's sister) wore the Star of David because of a love for Israel but never ever told their kids that their grandfather was Jewish. That we had this rich family history that was far different than any of us knew. When I said I hadn't known until I was 26, she laughed and said "well, I'm 68 and just finding this out. That's crazy!"
I would hazard that most of the many cousins have no idea. It also brings to the surface the many confusing stories we do know about the family which we now will try to collect puzzle pieces from various cousins and see if any of us can figure out just what was the real story on our ancestors. Like my cousin said "My first response when she figured out what the tree was saying was 'I'm one of the chosen people!'" How we would have loved to have known. Eating kosher hot dogs and pickled herring is just not enough of a heritage to be adequate to pass on.
There are many other mysteries that are coming to light beyond the ethnicity issues. Countries of origin are not right - stories of certain marriages and the seemingly-common disappearing spouses are found in several lines. Education achievement, occupations, standing in community, all seemingly half-truths or totally home-spun.
The good of it is that we all have a sense of humor - those two of us that have discussed it now LOL - the hard thing is we are seriously wondering how many other things we were told are not true and that is unsettling to some extent (I figure my sister was right that they found me in a trashcan , that I was a Hungarian refugee and that Roy Rogers of cowboy fame saw me naked in the bathtub.)
As our parents are rapidly dying or caught in various stages of dementia, any clarification will likely not be found. My mom is the most lucid one left and she is a professional fabricator . I am amazed at the absurd things that were kept secret and I figure if absurd petty things were buried, what serious issues are kept in the shadows? I'm afraid if we ask her too much , we'll drive her over the edge so I don't comment on things I come across anymore.
So, maybe if you have a President in your line (today, looking at the political figures, I'm not sure I would brag on that) - or a famous general - or a martyr, maybe you know the family stories and they are true. And maybe there are good records. The rest of us, well, Newspapers.com gives us some fullness on our families - the census data gives a bit more - piecing personal stories together to get a better idea of how creative they all were - that's what we are left with. And we'll just use our imaginations to fill in the blanks. LOL - they may just wish they had been honest. We're an imaginative, well-educated and driven group of progeny and our interpretations may be worse than reality.
Perhaps some peoples have learned its best not to be too traceable?
Like the Jews in Europe? They hunted down anyone with Jewish blood, not just those going to Temple, etc. They traced lineage back decades, and they were looking for Jewish blood, not Jewish by religion. It was one of the first massive use of IBM cards, to sort the massive data they somehow accumulated.
Perhaps one day they will decide the Scots are the evil in the world? Do I want my Scottish lineage in every database?
Perhaps some peoples have learned its best not to be too traceable?
Like the Jews in Europe? They hunted down anyone with Jewish blood, not just those going to Temple, etc. They traced lineage back decades, and they were looking for Jewish blood, not Jewish by religion. It was one of the first massive use of IBM cards, to sort the massive data they somehow accumulated.
Perhaps one day they will decide the Scots are the evil in the world? Do I want my Scottish lineage in every database?
Dang - I'm a Scottish Hebrew..............don't stand a chance................
I don't think the traceable aspect played into my family's reasoning. I think it was likely the times and general prejudice. And the uncertainty of being a child in essentially what would be seen from some viewpoints as a mixed marriage.
In my case however, the Jewish issue is just one mystery. The lack of knowledge about family lines is very evident in the less exotic backgrounds. I never thought about how odd it was but I seemed to understand I was not to push for more in-depth answers. I spend a lot of time reading about areas where my family lived and the norms for that time. Sometimes that adds a little understanding of what is very disjointed .....
Actually, an interesting observation on a document of a family member by marriage; not a blood relative but I have read a lot about the family as it gives me some insight into mine.. His will in 1930 had the standard distribution of assets and the like but one entry I found extremely strange. It stated that all photographs and pictures of his mother and father , his wife and himself were to be destroyed upon his death................
I have never seen anything like that. And I was horrified as a historian and researcher, wondering if that was a practice of many people of that time . I checked to see if there was any prohibition of certain Jewish sects on photography but found none. The sad thing about that is that this particular individual was an extremely colorful character in the District of Columbia at that time with a fascinating family. His wife was the daughter of what would become a major building supply store that was all over the East Coas in the futuret. His mother was the daughter of an individual very connected with the father of Hungarian independence and in fact emigrated with the individual when the families fled Hungary for the United States. And his father was one of the early Jewish business entities in the District of Columbia during the civil war. If pictures were all destroyed , what a loss of history that would be fascinating for his future generations as well as the history of the city and the Jewish community.
Dang - I'm a Scottish Hebrew..............don't stand a chance................
I don't think the traceable aspect played into my family's reasoning. I think it was likely the times and general prejudice. And the uncertainty of being a child in essentially what would be seen from some viewpoints as a mixed marriage.
In my case however, the Jewish issue is just one mystery. The lack of knowledge about family lines is very evident in the less exotic backgrounds. I never thought about how odd it was but I seemed to understand I was not to push for more in-depth answers. I spend a lot of time reading about areas where my family lived and the norms for that time. Sometimes that adds a little understanding of what is very disjointed .....
Actually, an interesting observation on a document of a family member by marriage; not a blood relative but I have read a lot about the family as it gives me some insight into mine.. His will in 1930 had the standard distribution of assets and the like but one entry I found extremely strange. It stated that all photographs and pictures of his mother and father , his wife and himself were to be destroyed upon his death................
I have never seen anything like that. And I was horrified as a historian and researcher, wondering if that was a practice of many people of that time . I checked to see if there was any prohibition of certain Jewish sects on photography but found none. The sad thing about that is that this particular individual was an extremely colorful character in the District of Columbia at that time with a fascinating family. His wife was the daughter of what would become a major building supply store that was all over the East Coas in the futuret. His mother was the daughter of an individual very connected with the father of Hungarian independence and in fact emigrated with the individual when the families fled Hungary for the United States. And his father was one of the early Jewish business entities in the District of Columbia during the civil war. If pictures were all destroyed , what a loss of history that would be fascinating for his future generations as well as the history of the city and the Jewish community.
How strange....and sad, about the pictures. Maybe he just didn't like the way the pictures turned out? I seldom get a picture that turns out right, I look terrible in most! Watch it be you're guessing at all sorts of reasons, delving into diverse possibilities, etc, and it was something more mundane, like that?
Still, that must be frustrating, all those pictures destroyed
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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My grandparents didn't talk about people beyond who they personally knew. They really had no idea what ethnic makeup we were, which makes sense since their ancestors arrived in the region some 200 years prior and you have to go to the 1700s and 1600s when our ancestors came from Europe. And we are mutts anyway, English, Scottish, German, Dutch, Welsh, French, and Irish. Also doing genealogy was very tough back then and would involve literally traveling to distance court houses or Salt Lake city to obtain documents. I had an aunt who went to Salt Lake several times just to do genealogy research and she found out less than I can with an internet search.
Hey everyone, interesting replies here. Out of my 2 sets of grandparents, I only knew my grandfather who did live to be over 90. The others had died before I was born. My grandfather had told stories me family stories he knew about but he did not really get into genealogy. As I mentioned before, my grandfather's uncle had enjoyed genealogy and did extensive research in his retirement years.
Even if we are in a different time today and genealogy is seemingly more popular than it was just 2 or 3 generations ago or so, I think very few family members hold such an avid interest.
It doesn't surprise me at all that many people have little idea about their breadth of their family's history. At g-grandparent level, you have eight family stories to consider. At gg-grandparent level, you have sixteen, and so on and so forth. That's a lot of information to track and process!
It doesn't surprise me at all that many people have little idea about their breadth of their family's history. At g-grandparent level, you have eight family stories to consider. At gg-grandparent level, you have sixteen, and so on and so forth. That's a lot of information to track and process!
Funny that you mention how quickly the tree expands. I was contemplating drawing a tree on a wall for a large visual of the family tree. In estimating the space it would take, I was staggered at that rapid expansion of great great grandparents and beyond without even considering the great aunts , uncles and their progeny.
I started out classifying my family with different colored index cards assigned to the four grandparents. LOL - I now have an insane number of cards, including those for marriages into the family who would not be blood relations but whose children would be. Needless to say, there is not a wall big enough unless I move to China.......or maybe near the border wall after the 2016 election.
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512 These would just be the great X whatever parents..........it is unbelievable.
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I seldom get a picture that turns out right, I look terrible in most! Watch it be you're guessing at all sorts of reasons, delving into diverse possibilities, etc, and it was something more mundane, like that?
