Digging up dead people

"If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are."

~Madeleine L'Engle~

I've mentioned one of my passions a few blogs ago - remembering and honoring police officers who were killed in the line of duty.  My other passion is tracing my ancestral roots or, as I jokingly call it, 'digging up dead people'.  I saw a saying on a website once that kind of nailed it for me.  I don't remember the exact wording but it was something like "those who don't remember their ancestors don't deserve to be remembered by their descendants".  Maybe ancestry is my way of achieving immortality.  Who knows?

Anyway, I've had an interest in my ancestry for as long as I can remember.  A couple of years ago, I was going through an old address book of mine and found a forty-year old note that I had put away for future reference.  I remembered asking my grandparents about their grandparents and wrote down what they had told me.  I had long since forgotten the note and had discovered the information on my own but it served to remind me how long I've been interested.  I put the note away to find another day.

In the beginning, all I wanted to know was names, dates of birth, marriage and death and who their parents were.  I didn't care about the dreary details of their lives or how many siblings they may have had.  I didn't care if they were rich or poor, if they fought in any wars or if they were leaders or scoundrels.  Oh how simple it was way back then!

I have traced all of my lines to the Civil War and several I have traced to the 1600's.  When I first learned that my ancestors were here that early, I discovered a new 'need to know' - I needed to know where they came from.  In the process, I also learned that there really IS something about sharing DNA - I feel a connection, a kinship, to my ancestors that surprised me.  I've received photos of some of my ancestors from others (distant cousins?) who are researching the same lines and have been more than a little surprised at how many of my close living relatives I can see in the faces of those who came before.

One of the things I learned was that no piece of information was too small to be important or overlooked.  I began learning about the lives of my ancestors.  In the earliest of my lines, I found plantation owners who grew tobacco and used indentured servants to work the land.  I found farmers, fishermen and oystermen.

I have a third great-grandfather who I lovingly refer to as a horny old geezer.  He and my third great-grandmother had seven children before she died.  Four short months after her death, he married again - this time his wife was the same age as his second daughter and, in fact, was the sister of that daughter's husband.  Grampa and wife number two had eleven children - at least two of them born when Grampa was in his eighties.

Another ancestor - a collateral ancestor, really (an uncle or cousin of a direct ancestor) was tried for treason during the Revolutionary War.  Apparently, he supported the British and helped them by blowing up his neighbor's ships that were docked in the harbor.

With the help of my oldest son, I (well, HE) found the location of the unmarked grave of another third great-grandfather who died during the Civil War.  This grandfather was wounded at Manassas and it was that wound that eventually led to his death.  After discovering the grave, I was able to have a tombstone placed on his grave and, with the help of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, organized a ceremony to honor this grandfather. I even wrote and gave an eulogy for my ancestor.

I was told by an uncle about an ancestor who was kicked out of Germany "under scandal" - why he was in Germany is a mystery to me because that family was in America long before he was kicked out of Germany.  I'm also curious about that 'scandal'.  It seems that the more I learn, the less I know.

Tracing my roots isn't just about dead people.  I've met several cousins - some removed, some not - who have become near and dear to me.  That in and of itself has made the entire journey worth it.