Look up ‘genealogy’ in the dictionary and you’ll read something along the lines of “an account of the descent of a person, family or group from an ancestor” or “the study of family pedigrees.” Sounds a little ho-hum, doesn’t it?
But Google the phrase ‘genealogy research’ and you’ll get more than 1,600,000 hits. That’s an awful lot of listings; maybe genealogy isn’t so ho-hum after all.
My high school Civics teacher, who taught a genealogy class at night at El Centro College, gave the class an extra credit assignment to draw up our family trees. I discovered that I knew little about my father’s family. That wasn’t unusual, since my parents divorced when I was very young and my dad lived in another city, but what surprised me was that neither he nor his father could tell me much about their ancestors. I started researching to see what I could discover.
I began at the Dallas Public Library’s genealogical division downtown. It was a tremendous resource, and I spent countless hours scrolling through microfilmed census records. Until it happens to you, you might not understand the thrill of seeing the name of an ancestor written in the spidery handwriting of a census taker. Even when you can’t find a name you’re looking for, it’s still interesting to look at those old records. Once I found an address where numerous women shared the same residence, and the occupation of each was shown as “Bawd.”
Genealogy can increase your vocabulary.
Before the advent of the Internet, unless one could afford to travel, research was often limited to the local library, court, cemetery or church records, correspondence, and stories from relatives for information.
For many years the LDS (Latter Day Saints) church has shared its vast collection of genealogy records through inter-library loans and now on the Internet. These days literally millions of records are online and available with a keystroke. Unfortunately, there are lots of those resources that are full of errors and careless assumptions made by those who are less than diligent in their research, and it’s important to be cautious in what you take as true.
There are legitimate professionals who will research for a fee, but there are also some who, for a price, are miraculously always able to discover that you are related to British royalty, or the Kennedys, or President Barack Obama.
Let’s face it, most of us are descended from just plain folks. But those folks might have had interesting lives. I was astonished when I learned that my family lore held that a great-great-grandfather had killed a man over a poker game, and that another ancestor was a sharpshooter in the Civil War.
My favorite story was of my own great-grandfather John Tomlinson, whose wife died at age 35 (probably of exhaustion) after bearing him nine children. With five of those children being under the age of ten, that practical gentleman headed off to Tennessee to “court an old maid” he knew about.
On the way he stopped off in Arkansas to visit a cousin. Lou Ella Shofner, age 24, was in Arkansas visiting her sister, who introduced her to the rich widower. John embarked on a whirlwind courtship, married Lou Ella and brought her home to Texas.
And then he told her about the nine children.
I’ve tried to picture the moment of the great revelation, without much success. “Oh, Lou Ella, I KNEW there was something I forgot to tell you…”
But I got the story straight from her daughter’s mouth. Aunt Birdie told me “If Mama had known what she was getting into, she wouldn’t have done it.” In 1890, a woman couldn’t easily divorce her husband, so Lou Ella, only seven years older than her oldest stepdaughter, stayed with it and gave her husband seven more children, the youngest being my grandfather.
Who needs celebrity ancestors? There’s enough excitement and intrigue in some ordinary-folks' stories to rival any current reality TV show. But the only way you’ll ever know that is if you start looking into your own family history, asking questions and seeking out the stories. Your local genealogical society or Public Library will be glad to help you get started.
(Dallas Morning News online 4-08-09)
