Genesis of My Family History Passion

My genealogical education began by watching my mother and grandmother strategize searches, rejoice in successes, and experience the inevitable serendipitous moments that come with the territory. I have faint recollections of tagging along on their "gathering" adventures.  Oh, I wish now I could go back with my more experienced eyes and pay attention!  Genealogy and family history work is all about "capturing the moment."

I've spent a fair amount of my lifetime trying to add to what my mother and grandmother accomplished.   In my generation the tools to search and the tools to assemble the information have changed dramatically.  Hand-written inquiries or letters typed on old manual or the "modern" electric typewriters were our basic means of communicating with relatives or archives in other parts of the globe.  Oh, don't forget the rotary-dial telephone.  We had a pretty pink one in our house, conveniently tied to the wall.  (One could get fairly tangled up in the 30-foot cord in your excitement of hearing from a new genealogical connection!)

Now our computers, laptops, and smart phones connect us with the world-wide community in seconds and put snail mail to shame.  Wow, how exciting!  (I still love getting genealogy mail though.  There is something about opening a package, for whatever purpose.) Just think, if my 4th great grandfather had Facebook, I would know what he ate for lunch everyday, or how the herds were doing, or what his family in the "old country" were up to, or why he moved so many times without the convenience of a U-haul, or what it was like to feed and clothe their large family!) 

Since my marriage, my husband and I have developed a satisfactory partnership in our family history escapades.  He supplies the dough for technical tools (great computer, printer/scanner and digital camera), drives to remote cemeteries to take pictures, assists in the technical part of class presentations, has read his fair share of microfilms, and hears me out on strategies.  I do the rest.

We've pulled our children into this too. Ask my children about visiting cemeteries and you will have varied answers.  One adventure involved my two oldest daughters and myself trying to find a particular burial spot in a remote region.  To cap off our glorious discoveries, we managed a run in with an elk as we entered the main highway.  No one was hurt and we spent an exciting ride home in the dark with a smashed windshield and elk hide stuck in every crevice of the car.  We figure our guardian angels, who just might have been the people we were searching for, kept us safe.  One son having been forced at a young age to have picnics in some of the more remoter cemeteries with me and his granny, and spending a fair share of his birthdays, which often land on Memorial Day weekend, in commemorating our dearly departed, refuses to "assist" any more. Another son studied French in high school and recently returned from an LDS mission in Paris.  His assignment will be reading those French records of our Swiss ancestors.  Can you see how providence is making it come together?

What makes us do it, this thing called genealogy or family history? The passion connected to pouring through old books and photographs, reading a newly-found diary, rejoicing in a cemetery, and connecting with some long-lost relative just might be driven by some very deep spiritual DNA.  That tie that binds us to those who've gone beyond and those who are yet to come is very, very strong.  When we make those connections it gives us purpose for our existence in the chain of generations.  I've grown to love the new television series, "Who Do You Think You Are." That desire and passion to continue searching escalates within me, often to the point of tears, every time I see someone else make the same exciting journey of discovery.

The last words of the Old Testament speak volumes towards this connection with our progenitors and our descendants, "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:6).

I don't need any more curses than I'm presently handling, so I'll continue to fill up extra slots of time pulling these "fathers" and "children" all together.  I hope you will join me and together we can make it happen even faster!

Next up...they came to America, Eugene Bessire and Marianna Emily Grimm