The Family Genealogists Meet

 

There is likely no one else in the world other than those of us who care about our family history who can say that news about a distant cousin would have an impact on us. How many people even know who their third cousins are—let alone meet them? And yet, earlier this week, my mother's cousin called to tell me that her third cousin had just died, and I not only knew exactly who she meant, but felt a sadness over the loss. After all, I had met this third cousin before.

Perhaps this sense of connection is for those of us who also know where our families once lived. Those of us who know the story of our ancestors, the key features of their lives, may relate to this feeling more closely. After all, this distant cousin of mine still lived in the same small town where his second great-grandfather—my third great-grandfather—had settled shortly after his marriage. The family has lived there for a long, long time.

I had met this cousin, thanks to an introduction by my mother's cousin, who made it a point to keep in touch with the descendants of those original settlers. I had asked for that introduction, and afterwards, I was so glad I did. Walking the land where those ancestors lived and farmed is an experience I can't match in words. I guess that's why people value what's meant by the term "heritage."

Mulling over that phone call this week sparked many other thoughts. I realized we live in an age in which we have the ability to reach out to those who were previously mere strangers but whom we now realize are family. Granted, there is an element of relationship required before we can bestow that term "family" upon those we've never met before, but that relationship can grow more quickly than we'd assume. Meeting this cousin for the first time, spending hours talking about the people important in his branch of the family, sharing what we knew about those who have gone on before—that becomes fertile soil for growing that family relationship with yet another cousin whom we'd never known before.

While I'll miss being able to visit this distant cousin in his hometown again—and certainly his treasury of family anecdotes and insights—the thoughts his passing sparked make me realize how blessed we are to be able to reach out and connect with those strangers who are willing to explore the "familyness" of our relationship.  

Rescuing Disappearing Generations

 

A horrible thought struck me this past week while tying together the names which belong in my father's family tree: by doing this work, I am essentially rescuing names from what would otherwise be disappearing generations. For those of us whose parents or grandparents came to this country feeling less than welcome upon their arrival, I can understand why they might have wished to conceal their family background: it helped them get ahead—or at least avoid more discrimination—by acting like someone whom they weren't. 

What they've left for us, however, is a blank slate when it should have been a pedigree filled with names from faraway places. And it is our job now, with the tools we have, to recreate those ancestral stories—the stories which should have been, but weren't presented to us as part of our heritage.

This month, as I work on my goal of discovering more about Franziska Olejniczak, my second great-grandmother, I want to counter-balance that secrecy by putting her family's names out there in as many places as possible. I've been jumping from tree to tree, in the several websites where I've posted information on my family, to ensure that she and her family are represented, despite the difficulty in finding documentation.

It's been slow going. Since today is the time for my biweekly count, I realized that these two weeks straddle my goal last month—focused on my father-in-law's family—and this month's quest for my own father's roots. Still, a gain of thirty six new family names is not that bad. My family tree stands at 38,457 with that small advance.

Yes, there were some additions to my father-in-law's tree, as well, coming in at the tail end of the previous month. Forty four new names in my in-laws' tree grows their tree to 36,843 documented individuals.

I am fairly certain the growth spurt from earlier this year will come to a near halt with the difficulty of researching my Polish ancestry, but it will keep moving forward, nonetheless. As we tackle the collateral lines of the Olejniczak family next week, we will hopefully make some gains right then—and explore online resources in Poland which can help move progress further.

No matter how progress seems to bog down during this month, the main goal is to keep focused on the bigger picture: rescuing the names and dates of family members who would otherwise be lost to time. If it sounds like I am on a mission, that is indeed so. There are currently gaps in records from some countries. There are some problems with access through distance or difficulties with languages. But it is still possible to at least do something. And that is what I intend to do.

When the Party is Over

 

"The party is over," declared CNN Business last week. ABC News chimed in: Tupperware "lifts the lid" on its financial woes as it voluntarily initiated Chapter 11 proceedings on September 17. Known for its "once iconic" plastic food storage containers, developed post-World War II to "help war-weary families save money on costly food waste," the company has faced a combination of financial downturns through dwindling sales and rising costs of raw materials and shipping. 

While readers of A Family Tapestry may not be so interested in the latest financial news, those of us fascinated with family ephemera and material culture may pick out a useful strand in the theme of passing traditions once held dear by our more recent ancestors. How many of us can recall a mother or grandmother who attended a Tupperware party? Or taught us how to "burp" a Tupperware lid? While we are not talking about long-forgotten culture of our great-great-grandmothers, this, too, belongs to the collection of items of day-to-day living that are, before our eyes, passing into the heap of forgotten historic trivia.

While we are chasing those elusive brick-wall ancestors of prior centuries, we can't forget that we may be the missing link to passing along the minutiae of life familiar to the "ancestors" we, ourselves, knew personally. I'm encouraged when I see bloggers like Sheryl Lazarus intent on not only sharing the writings of her own grandmother in her blog, but delving deeper into the day-to-day details of that grandmother's life, surroundings, and culture.

Take, for instance, her focus on a devil's food cake from her grandmother's diary and an updated version, compared in her February 27, 2012, blog post in A Hundred Years Ago. Taking a magnifying glass to the details of our near ancestors' lives may be enlightening—possibly even helping us understand them a little bit more. After all, can you, for instance, name all fifty seven of Heinz's "varieties"? If your life was filled with versions of this Heinz advertisement a hundred years ago, perhaps you could. Surely your grandmother could.

These are the too-little-to-notice details which filled our near-ancestors' days, the ephemeral traces of what life was like for them. Too quickly gone, spotting such details, for the ones who lived them, would bring back memories just as surely as hearing a strain from one of the top-forty hits from your high school years might flood you with an avalanche of reminiscences.

So, yeah, while Tupperware may be having its financial woes—not to mention detractors of plastic manufacturing in general—what we are seeing before our very eyes might be the passing of an era, an institution so familiar to our own parents and grandparents that it became almost invisible for its ubiquity in their lives. While clutching a Tupperware bowl would certainly not bring back to life a cherished grandmother, we can at least vicariously live a small part of her reality through these now-fleeting tokens which once made her life's everyday routine what it was.

Taking Time for Family

 

Keeping track of the stories of past generations, we family historians sometimes seem to become focused more on those who are long gone than those family members in our current circles. Though my research has lately transported me to centuries past and homes across the continent, this month I'll be taking time to be with more recent members of our extended family.

Thoughts like these were running through my mind yesterday as we made the long drive south to attend the funeral of a cousin's husband—the same cousin whose brother's grandchild will bid us fly to the midwest for a wedding at the other end of this month. Yes, I spend lots of time getting to know seventh great-grandparents on the east coast, but taking time to be with current family is far more important. Ancestors are fun to get to know, but there are no connections quite like the loved ones in our immediate circle.

While posts for the next few days will understandably be quite understated—there won't be any time to put into research tasks while away—you know those thoughts of family will still be running through my mind. How can we compare anything to family? Such a mix of ambiguities and unexpected outcomes as each of us morph and reinvent ourselves and our relationships as quickly as the decades fly by us. Each of us is a study in enigmas. It can take a lifetime just to say we know even one of our relatives—let alone the ancestors we've never met. But if we don't take the time to be present and absorb their ambience, how can we ever begin to understand?

The Power of Remembering

 

Recently, the RootsTech blog heralded the launch of a new program in preparation for their upcoming event next February 29 through March 2 in Salt Lake City. The blog post, called "The Power of Remembering and Being Remembered," includes a video demonstrating the strength of such a process—especially how it felt for "everyday" individuals to be remembered by those most important to them.

Emphasizing that "Your Story is Worth Remembering," the RootsTech team slated "Remembering" as their theme for next spring's conference, a fitting choice. Further, they are encouraging all of us—around the world, as only an organization like that can do—to participate by creating our own videos with that same purpose. Their social media challenge includes your chance to share as well—and even use the RootsTech audio clip, "Out of Time," if you want to participate by posting your own version of this "Remembering" meme.

As I look back on my own dad's career years—and remember several of the others who were part of that same world—I can safely say I've been influenced as I now realize all there was to remember about his life. Though he never acted as if he were the one who accomplished all he did, it is inspiring to learn his story, even after all these years.

Watching the RootsTech video, I can see why the producers say there is power in being remembered. But I also think there is a great deal of power in the other part of their title—the power of remembering. As we go through the process of learning all there is to learn about our relatives and ancestors, it does something to us, as well.

As we learn about these people important to our own life, and realize that a small part of them is actually flowing through us as well, it can inspire us and shape us, separate and apart from our own life trajectory. Knowing we now know their story is a meta-knowledge beyond just the facts of knowing the story. To know that we know is the power of remembering.

The first part—to know—is to impart upon the other the recognition that they are remembered. That is powerful in its own right—for our relative. More than that, to step back and realize that we know that we know—the power of remembering—returns that gift back upon ourselves. It makes us different, it changes us, to know that we know our family's story, for the story of those others now becomes our story, too. And that can change us. 

Everything Changes

 

Last weekend, I taught a class on using social media for genealogy. While this is one of the subjects I enjoy presenting on, it is also a topic which needs frequent updating. Why? Because social media is constantly changing. In fact, just after I had updated my presentation's section on that flighty online entity now known as "X—formerly Twitter" and shared someone's, um, tweet about where that online genealogy community had migrated, what should occur but that one of the newer options had already decided to close its virtual doors, effective the beginning of this month. With social media, everything is subject to change. 

We can expect the online world to be rapidly changing; it's the nature of that universe. But this weekend, I took in an entirely different scene of change. It just so happened that I picked the most perfect weather for a getaway to the ocean. Soaking up the sun as I stared out over the mesmerizing blue of the water, I was reminded that the last time I had visited this beautiful spot, it was after a raging storm had blown waves high over the cliffs and across the shoreline road—surely a terrifying sight to the homeowners in the nearby neighborhood. It wasn't hard to spot the reminder of those sudden changes, even in this beautiful sunshine. The walking path—stairs and all—had been bitten into by a raging sea which was determined to leave its mark on land once considered safe. Everything changes, even the rocks bolstering solid land from the encroaching sea.

So here I am, struggling to sort through the changes in Uncle John's family, especially the changes in surnames for both his own and his wife's Polish immigrant relatives. And I sit here, wondering how anyone could consider changing something as immutable as a name, when it obviously happens all the time. If a business can morph from one form to another, why not an individual? If even the coastline lies defenseless against forces of the sea, why do I expect my ancestors to exist through history like some human rock of Gibraltar?

There has been a trend, lately, to view our genealogy through the lens of social history. Taking the macro history which swirls above our heads as it impacts the entire world and blending it with the micro history of our ancestors' personal timelines can give us a far different readout of what life was like for those relatives of ours as they traveled their own lifespan. Those events, whether enormous or inconsequential, became a part of the barrage of changes having an impact on our ancestors. Changing choices, changing paths, changing both big and small decisions, those swirling influences made our ancestors the people they turned out to be.

If, instead of simply picturing our ancestors through the three main lenses of vital records—birth, marriage, death—we could portray them as the living, dynamic, changing individuals they surely were, I think it would bring them to life for us, once again. If nothing else, perhaps that would allow us to understand them a bit better, especially for the choices they made—or failed to make. Given the span of an entire lifetime, surely for this we should also be encouraged to realize everything changes.  

It's All Relative

 

It seems odd, now that I've switched tracks to research my paternal Polish roots this month, to compare what I can find on DNA matches for both sides of my family. Still carrying forward that earlier goal of checking all my ThruLines matches for my maternal Tilson line, I am now running that task side by side with the race to wrap up Aunt Rose's story of her parents from Poland. Talk about a contrast: examining colonial American ancestors alongside descendants of immigrant ancestors here merely since the last few years of the nineteenth century.

The Tilson project led me to DNA relatives who were at least fourth cousins, and more likely to be fifth cousins or even more distantly related. The challenge in tracing that paper trail was to find mentions of familial connection in documents such as old wills from the 1700s. The challenge in finding Aunt Rose's relatives, once I discovered her origin in Pomerania, is to locate any actual documents—though I'm happy to at least have transcriptions for a start.

On the far-removed Polish side of the relative equation, my DNA matches are more along the lines of third cousins. Think about it: our family just returned from an out of state trip in which my daughter helped her second cousin once removed prepare for her wedding. If my daughter has children of her own, they will become this bride's third cousins. While the number may make that seem like a distant relationship, in our family's world, a third cousin can be quite close. Such would be the relationship with these DNA matches who are both mine and Aunt Rose's relatives—if only our family had kept up the connections.

A relationship can seem so close, and yet it can also be a calculation which makes it seem so distant, so far removed. One third cousin might be no more than a name on paper at a DNA testing company, while another could be the next guest at a family celebration. It's all relative—in more ways than one.

Adding a New Generation

 

When I think about the key ingredient which first beguiled me to pursue my family's history—the stories passed down through my mother to me from her grandaunt Fannie—I remember how startled I was to discover that it could actually have been possible for me to meet the family's great storyteller. The stories she shared were full of history from the early days of the family's settlement in Florida—back as long ago as the 1830s. And yet, it wasn't until after I graduated from college that Aunt Fannie had passed away. She had taken on a reputation as historic as the memories of previous generations which she had captured in her tales.

And how many of those family stories there are to capture, even after all these years of pursuit. It reminds us of our role in keeping those stories alive for another generation—and not a moment too soon. Just this past week, our extended family welcomed in the first arrival in the next generation. Adding a new generation to the family's history reiterates the call for us to continue preserving and passing on those stories. Someday, this newest generation will take our place, and what will they have to pass along, if we don't give them the gift of these remembrances?

While so many family historians bemoan what seems to be a lack of interest in what they've discovered by years of research, I still am convinced that someone in the upcoming generations will step up to take our place as preserver of family remembrances. While this first member of the newest generation for our family may not take the helm as our future family historian, someone joining the ranks of that next generation may well be the one. As long as we share those stories, there will be someone who will feel the call to step up and do so. We never know, as we welcome in each member of this newest generation, who will be the one. But that there will be one, I am quite certain. 

The Re-Do List

 

Do you ever write notes to yourself? You know, those scribbled items jotted on the first piece of scratch paper your hand could find in the frenzy of the moment.

And then, once the moment passed, did you forget to read your own mail?

Twenty years ago...

Yes, there was a time when I wrote such scrawled messages. I even put them in a safe place to take care of—later. That convenient follow-though time apparently never arrived, for now that I've done a deep dive for one particular genealogy file—and I even found it—I emerged at the surface with many scraps of paper clasped in hand.

Some of those notes were messages taken during the inevitable family calls that an aunt or uncle had passed away—saved so that, when the travel arrangements to attend the funeral were taken care of, I could revisit the note to enter the details in the proper place in the family tree. In this same category, though on a much more cheerful note, were the many holiday greeting cards and family newsletters with details on the ever-mounting count of great-grandchildren for cousins living across the continent. Though I'd likely never meet those descendants, their names and special dates deserve a place in our family tree—when I finally get around to it.

From that era before online access to historic newspaper holdings, photocopied pages from publications small and large have their place in those old files, as well. Noted in the margin are reminders to glean the information from the text and add it to the family tree. Bernie Guinan of Grafton visiting his uncle Hugh Quigley, noted in the May 31, 1899, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Daily Herald meant I could connect those specific in-laws to the descendants of one of my father-in-law's Tully aunts, bit by bit piecing the family constellation together. Or I could follow the many New York City and Long Island newspaper articles chronicling my own father's musical career during the big band era.

All of which needed to—eventually—be converted to electronic notes in the family tree. 

But didn't get done.

When I went looking for that list of Flanagan burials earlier this summer, unearthing that one single file folder unleashed an avalanche of other notes needing to be attended to, as well. Let's just say those old to-do lists now need a re-do. This has begun the first step of a long walk down memory lane as I revisit the events which originally prompted those notes. And that's been a good thing, not just for getting those file cabinets re-organized, but for the mind and heart journeys the process has induced.

Sometimes, genealogy is not just for passing things along to the next generation. Sometimes, it is for us, as well. 

We Start Small

 

When we start small, it can mean all the world, just to see us smile. 

When we leave, a lifetime of treasured memories is left to capture—but only for those who  know how to preserve them.

It takes a lifetime to build a life worth living—but by then, all that's left is the telling. That life worth living, that life once lived, only means something to the ones who received its gift. But the only way that gift can keep giving is if someone takes the time to perpetuate that legacy, to remember and repeat and pass it on.

For Maureen Sander, remembering her life full of love, one year since she left.

For Margaret Stevens, remembering ninety eight years of love and generosity.

 

Kate's Sullivan Beau

 

When we research the relatives we've never met—those ancestors whose life story ended long before our own time—we need to take care that we don't superimpose our assumptions about everyday living upon people whose reality didn't include telephones or cars, let alone computers. When we think of alarm clocks, we need to think more along the lines of roosters or hungry cows in the barn. And when we think of weddings, we most likely need to think "arranged" more than star-crossed.

Thus, despite my dismay in discovering that the ancestor of my husband's Falvey DNA match was married to yet another Sullivan, there may be a silver lining in that surname challenge. Perhaps, just perhaps, the reason Catherine Falvey married another Michigan-born child of Irish immigrants wasn't because they fell in love in high school. Perhaps it was because Catherine's family once knew James Sullivan's family back in County Kerry, Ireland.

That, of course, would be the optimal outcome. Then, I could trace yet another Sullivan line and hope it would lead me to the townland these folks once called home. In the meantime, though, we need to paper our trail back home with solid documents to support our case.

Here's why James Sullivan's circumstances have such a tempting draw on me. For one thing, we can find him in the 1860 census records, just as we did for Catherine Falvey's family. There he was, with his seven siblings, all living with their Irish-born parents Timothy and Mary Sullivan in the former township of Greenfield, Michigan, now part of Detroit.

Unlike Catherine Falvey's family, however, not all of James' siblings were born in Michigan. For some reason, Timothy and Mary stayed in Ireland long enough to bring four of their children into the world: eldest son Cornelius, second son John, and daughters Mary and Elizabeth. It was after Elizabeth's arrival around 1848 but before the birth of their fifth child Timothy, about 1851, that we can mark the family's arrival in North America.

While having the names of four Irish-born Sullivans may help me isolate that family constellation back in Ireland, the pattern of their immigration makes me wonder yet something else: could it be that they came to Detroit specifically because they had other family or near neighbors already settled in Detroit area? Or, seeing the Falveys' own family pattern in the 1860 census—their first child after their arrival here was also born in Michigan in 1851—could it be that the Sullivans and Falveys traveled together from Ireland?

I'm eyeing research cues such as these for one unfortunate reason: though it is clear that Catherine Falvey's father was named Daniel Falvey, I've already discovered that it will be a challenge to trace him back from his adopted home in Detroit to his origin in Ireland. Though I can find news on Daniel Falvey's family in America, there is not much to go by, once we jump back to the place where life began for that earlier generation of Falveys. Once again, my hope rests on finding details about yet another Sullivan family—one which, hopefully, guided the marriage of their son to a Falvey daughter for reasons beyond our modern-day approach to weddings.  

The New New Normal

 

Running errands in town yesterday, it occurred to me that, without giving it much thought, I was wearing my mask even when I didn't have to worry about any hovering hulk standing closer than the socially acceptable six feet away. But that wasn't because I'm a naturally compliant person—don't fool yourself on that one. It was for sheer self-interest that I donned my smoke-filter-equipped facial fashion statement. If COVID-19 ushered in the age of The New Normal, the California fires brought to us a new new normal.

Two weeks and counting, the twin infernos in northern California continue to make their impact on our atmosphere. The dog days of August could not possibly be the same as in past memory; everyone with any sense made sure that even their pets were inside, escaping the smoke. Who knows what life has been like on the outside; air conditioned artificial reality can make one forget it is still summer.

And where has that summer gone, anyhow? How did it escape us? The New Normal has a way of making us forget.

That actually is a misnomer. It isn't The New Normal. It's more like the new new new new normal, at least according to a New York Times publication, or its brief synopsis at Wikipedia. Which makes me feel less disappointed in myself that I didn't snap up the advice, at the beginning of this year's first New Normal, to journal the daily gyrations of life upon the onset of the pandemic. History in the making, and I missed my opportunity to tell of it. Maybe New Normal, The Sequel will be my chance to get with the documentary program.

And yet, I believe future generations will have ample opportunity to steep in the chattiness of our current age. If I don't save a pandemic diary for my descendants, they will hardly be at a loss to know what life was like in 2020. The generations I would have loved to know more about were those whose culture kept them tight-lipped and silent in the face of the tragedies they surmounted. In their new normal, they believed the best way forward was to say nothing of what was behind them.

We lack for that. Perhaps it's not in knowing what happened in any generation's experience that we mourn the loss of--we have, after all, the archived news reports of countless decades—but what we are missing is what the people who matter the most to us thought about what was happening to them. There is history—that recounting of the events with world-shaping impact—and then there is our story, the story of the people we call family. How history shaped the lives of those we love.

When I research my family lines and wonder about why an ancestor chose to do what he did, or why she was born in one country but died in another, what I'm looking for is not just a family's history. It's a yearning to have a relationship with people we never met, but who simultaneously infuse our every waking—and even sleeping—moment through the genetic strands they unwittingly bequeathed us.

Those choices we make, those actions we take, those moods which overpower us--where did they come from? I can find a specific segment on a chromosome, "paint" it on a digitized diagram approximating relative locations, and, if fortunate enough, be able to pinpoint which ancestor was the benefactor of that genetic pattern. Perhaps, as an echo of the stronger impulse impelling adoptees to find their birth parents, we who obsess with our genealogy may well be experiencing that same call from ancestors we never knew—and yet, know all too well through our own genetic signature.

It is that silent cry for relationship with those now-gone relatives that makes me wish for a token of their thoughts. I want to know what their new normal was, in crisis after crisis which swept through their life's timeline a hundred years ago or more. It isn't really just so I can glean the correct date or birthplace to enter on a pedigree chart; it's some token—some confirmation—of their reality that I can meld with my own. An impossible pursuit, perhaps, but worth the chase. After all, some of us do have ancestors who kept a written narrative on their way to a new normal.

More Reflections on Mother's Day

There is a reason why I've lingered this long over Mother's Day. Almost every year, Mother's Day falls either on, or very close to, my own mother's birthday. Of course, now that she's gone, I can't very well pick up the phone and give her a call. But the day never goes by without my thinking of her. The older I get, the more I find myself doing things I remember her doing. Perhaps that's because my memory was far more clear of her everyday actions in the later stages of her life than, say, when I was a young child. I think that dynamic is true for almost all of us.

At any rate, it seems all it takes is something as innocuous as a sigh, and it gets me thinking: that's exactly how she would have sighed. Or said an offhand comment, "Oh, well..." The DNA in me finds the most inconvenient times to remind me that it is replicating her in my own life. I wonder how many of my other ancestors express themselves through those strands in my genetic makeup.

I've never been one for the usual Mother's Day schmaltz. If you knew my mother, you'd understand why. She never evoked feelings of sentimentality. The warm, fuzzy sense people get when they think "grandmother" was never at top of mind for her grandchildren. She was her own person, and that person was not your stereotypical mom...which meant her children never had a chance at becoming stereotypical, either.

Still, days with traditionally-tracked dates such as these—Mother's Day, birthdays—find me thinking of this unconventional woman whom culture would refer to as my mom. I wonder whether her mystique was the force driving my lifelong quest to know more about what made up the person I am—and thus, the person she once was, as well. I suspect she came from a long line of women who also were not the quintessential wives or mothers. Such is our matriline: a motivator to learn more about what I don't know of my own family's roots.

It seems trite to say so—not to mention, how uncharacteristically stereotypical of me—but happy birthday, mom. It's your birthday today, and I still remember. Not that she'd hear me now, but sometimes it helps to anchor our nonconformist self with something a bit more soothingly traditional.

 

Junkman Froggett

A timeline, based on newspaper snippets, of how one great-grandson of William and Cassie Riley—my own third great-grandparents—came to be known as "Junkman Froggett" of Decatur, Illinois:

March 3, 1930, down on his luck and taking a nighttime walk along the railroad tracks, Henry Froggett is not only held up at knife point for his money—which amounted to only $2 in change in his pocket—but the pants in which pockets the money was found.

January 3, 1935, charged with the theft of a garbage can, Henry is held at the city jail, where he explains he thought it had a hole and "was just a piece of junk." While police felt this was a lead that might link Froggett to other recent garbage can thefts, Henry hoped he could be released from jail before that Friday, when he was supposed to report for work at a new work-relief program.

January 4, 1935, "Junkman Froggett" is released from jail, as no formal complaint was filed against him when the owner of the missing garbage can came to retrieve his property.

May 4, 1937, two Decatur men—yes, including our Henry—are held in the county jail, charged with petit larceny for stealing fifteen chickens from a local woman's home.

November 26, 1940, two men—and Henry remains the only constant in this duo—plead guilty in county court for petit larceny of an inlet grating from the city, and are sentenced to six months at the state farm. Apparently, the strategy of switching from chickens back to scrap metal didn't work for Henry.

July 14, 1943, struck by a freight train at a railroad crossing at 10:00 p.m. the previous night, Henry Froggett was found the following noon by a passerby, and is now recuperating at the local hospital from injuries to his back and arm.

October 14, 1943, while walking uptown from his step-daughter's home at 8:30 p.m., Henry Froggett is struck by a passing automobile, an apparent hit-and-run incident. His body slumps in the darkness, and he sustains injuries to his shoulder and head. A local hospital confirms that he also received internal injuries.

October 16, 1943, Decatur police learn that the driver of a Model A Ford had swerved at the scene of the hit and run incident, realizing in the darkness that there was a body in the road. The driver had gotten out of his car and directed traffic around the slumped body so as to avoid any further injury before an ambulance could arrive.

October 16, 1943, funeral services are held at the Moran & Sons Chapel at 10:30 a.m. for Henry Froggett, with burial at Greenwood Cemetery.

November 12, 1943, the coroner's jury returns the verdict that Henry Froggett, aged 61, died as a result of injuries when struck by a hit-and-run driver. The driver has not yet been found.

Whether Henry Froggett—whom Decatur residents once knew as "Junkman Froggett"—was perpetually down on his luck, or just had a maddening knack for getting things wrong, is hard to tell from this brief litany of his appearances in the local news. Perhaps his was a life doomed from the beginning. Or perhaps we need to consider his shortened and struggling lifespan in parallel with history's own timeline of bad luck episodes in the 1930s and 1940s.

Regardless of the truth of the matter, finding these vignettes of his life's struggles evokes a pathos I couldn't escape. While citizens of one 1940s city in Illinois may have rolled their eyes in impatience at yet another of Henry Froggett's antics, I imagine it might have been hard to be the one living the life of Decatur's Junkman.  

 

 

When There are Less of the Ones to Ask

When I mentioned, a couple weeks ago, about losing my older sister, some asked if I would be sharing stories about her. In a way, I'd love to, but I can't. Not because the grieving has incapacitated me or anything...it's just that this wasn't the type of sisterly relationship you might have had in mind. It's not like I can share wild stories of teenaged indiscretions or escapades where we snuck off together in a fit of mischievous abandon.

With a sister who was old enough to have been my mother, I have a far different set of stories. After all, this is the woman who, when my parents needed a few days away, volunteered for child care. Her daughter and I went to high school together—and amazed all our friends with the realization that it was possible for a niece to have an aunt who was in the same grade. This is the kind of sister with whom to share a very different set of secrets. It wasn't until I was properly schooled in "adulting" that I became closer to a sister like this.

Not to say we weren't close; she was a very loving person. All her children deeply mourn her passing. Time has not yet made this loss any easier.

As the years passed, our talks were filled with memories of family members no longer with us. My sister had the advantage of personally knowing relatives whom I only knew by names and stories. This included my paternal grandparents, both of whom had died before I was even born.

My sister—along with some of my cousins—was my partner in crime in cracking the mystery of my paternal grandfather, the one who kept his Polish roots so deeply hidden from everyone, even those in his own family. I would ask her crazy questions, the kind of stuff only those with face-to-face experience could answer, like, "Did he have an accent?" After all, how did a Polish immigrant pull off a stunt like reinventing himself as an Irishman? But somehow, he did. I wanted to know how.

My sister was the one who told me what my Grandma Sophie was like, how she kept the apartment so immaculately clean. My sister would describe the smell of the cleaning soap she used, or the route to get to her grandparents' home. And, of course, she'd share some of the fun little secrets kept with relatives now long gone.

Together, we'd puzzle over how the story of our grandparents' lives did not seem to add up to what we'd expect from the reality of where they came from and how they got here. Every now and then, my sis would pop up on Facebook or in an email and say something like, "Do you remember ever hearing this story?" Or, "This may sound crazy, but..." Even the wildest recollections were preserved, just in case anything came of such stories.

Almost all I ever learned about the grandparents I never met, I learned from talking to my older sister. In a way, I met them through her, a vicarious—and one-sided—relationship with the grandparents I never knew.

Losing my sister reminds me that there are, every day, fewer of this generation left for us to reach out to, or visit, or chat with, or share with in reminiscing. And yet, it's not as if we can feverishly make the rounds of everyone left in that oldest generation and compel them to immediately recall the details we seek.

I can't help but think of a family friend whose young daughter has recently taken up an interest in genetic genealogy. For Christmas this year, she got to become the family scientist and administer DNA tests to her grandmother and oldest grand-aunt. Just that experience itself—the asking for permission to test, even—precipitated the aunt's curiosity about a branch of her family long gone and barely remembered. Whatever became of those relatives? Now, the aunt wants to know—and may be one of a very few who even remember any of the details to help guide them to the right answers.

As we have the chance, these opportunities to chat with the younger generations help keep the family stories alive. Our oldest generation has a priceless treasure—one which they can either share with those who want to know, or take with them when no one thinks to ask. Anything that sparks that chance to talk precipitates the recouping of a family treasure on the verge of vanishing from the family's collective memory. While wills or marriage licenses may run the risk of courthouse fires, the tragedy of the risk of loss our family stories face is that it is entirely preventable with the simplest of solutions: just ask. While we still can.

A Feeling of Rootedness

What's at the root of this burgeoning fascination with our roots? I can't produce any definitive results of scientifically-designed surveys, but I suspect it partially involves a need to identify ourselves through the mosaic imprints gifted us by our ancestors.

For some, that drive to know is more pronounced. Adoptees, obviously, have a quest to identify the totally unknown. Recent immigrants, perhaps, wish to re-identify with the culture left by their parents or grandparents with the decision to uproot and move. And I, growing up with a surname not legally my own—nor even my father's, though he may have had a hazy remembrance from childhood of his true birth name—find a disconnect with the maiden name I long ago gave up.

All of us want to find a way to connect with our past—our "long past," as Scrooge inquired of Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Past—to see what, if any, echoes of that past have imprinted themselves on our reality today.

Perhaps because of such angst, my thoughts were turned to family this past holiday weekend—family long past, and perhaps those not so long passed. I often ponder traits and habits inherited from specific relatives I've known, but for some reason this was uppermost in my mind after having completed a visit down south, just before Thanksgiving. In the past, a visit to southern California often meant at least a stop to chat with my brother before heading back home—but not since his passing nineteen months ago.

Perhaps that was the reason that led me, one day after arriving back home again, to Google his name. Though a lesser-known actor, he was, after all, in show business. Such names do show up in media. I had started on that search, actually, by looking up my own father's name. My dad, a professional musician in New York, merited several "mentions" in city newspapers of the 1930s and 1940s, usually concerning where his dance band was playing, or which company was using his musical arrangements. What was interesting to find, though, was that his name also came up in more recent articles, long after his passing in the 1970s. Why? Because in his own interviews, my brother would always acknowledge how he got his start through my dad's backstage connections as a musician.

In my quest to know more about my own family—especially those who are no longer with us—of course I read every article and interview I could find. It was not just edifying but comforting to read about the every step my brother took on his own journey to become what he needed to become. But it was also uplifting to see my brother feel the need to acknowledge those who came before him, in recounting his own path. We come from those who became our roots.

In tracing those roots, we also become sensitized to other paths which lead back to those same beginnings. In researching a collateral line this past weekend, I stumbled upon another story of a family member who felt the call of the stage—and who eventually gifted that as a legacy to her two daughters. Though she was a fifth cousin to me—certainly someone I never knew of from my own immediate family—her story resonated with me, as I read through her biography.

Funny, but I wish my brother were here to tell him of this. I wonder if he ever knew her. A feeling like this—of seeking for connectedness—reminds me that the search for our roots surely is related to a corollary: a quest to identify with and belong to others.

Growing up Acultural

It took a genealogy conference to wake me up to the fact that I must have grown up in a cultural vacuum. When everyone else in my childhood was had come of age in the era of Heinz-57 conversations—I had friends who claimed being Italian, or German, or Irish, or Norwegian, who were all plain ol' American in my eyes—I didn't really feel like our family had a claim to anything foreign. Yeah, my dad felt the obligatory tug on Saint Patrick's Day to give a cheer for the Irish. But it took me half a lifetime to credibly demonstrate that that was just a coverup. He wasn't really Irish; in reality, his roots were Polish—and that, still true up to half a generation before his own birth. How could he have missed that?

So this weekend, as I sat in on conference sessions at Jamboree featuring speakers focused on researching eastern European roots—that includes Poland, folks—I felt strangely like I couldn't relate. I felt like the man without a country; Poland seemed no more my heritage than Ireland had been.

How that could be, I'm not sure. I certainly could identify with my friends' roots. My Italian friends had all that delicious food. So did my Jewish friends. The Germans could sing their heart out and dance those Oktoberfest kinds of dances. The Irish had their own signature easygoing style. But my family had...well...nothing.

Of course, we did have a heritage. After all, my mother's Broyles line did come from Germany—in the early 1700s. Any heritage that may have crossed the Atlantic with my German forebears has long been lost to me. There is no stirring in my chest at the thought of German allegiance. I can't even get excited about a German genealogy conference—even one being held a quick forty five minute commute from my house.

The "foreign" culture that became part of my family's heritage came much more recently, but it was one of the best-kept secrets to their own descendants of a mere generation removed from the immigrants. Any cooking styles, or holiday traditions, or customs, or mannerisms, or norms never seemed to cross the Atlantic with my grandparents and their families. To my grandparents, the fact that they were Polish was a detail to be hidden from the public's prying eyes. In fact, they went beyond that tight-lipped policy to masquerade as children of another culture by changing their name to blend in, in a city of millions, as if they were Irish immigrants.

To this day, my grandparents' descendants still cannot figure out the reason for the secrecy, though we've collaborated on research and recollections to try to arrive at a conclusion. All the usual "tells" don't provide clues: looking for holiday traditions, or favorite foods and recipes, or repeated use of foreign-sounding given names. Photos of my grandparents as adults reveal thoroughly modern Americans. And that's the very impression they worked hard to present.

As I sat in the Jamboree conference sessions this past weekend, benefiting from all the tips on how to research my Polish roots, I felt such a strange disconnect. I feel like I'm looking for the persons my grandparents never were. Yet, at the same time, that was indeed their heritage; it's just that they chose to keep it hidden. But is a culture a culture if it is never practiced? How can I say my roots are Polish if I have no idea what that culture was really like? There is no way to arrive at that feeling of coming home when you've been robbed of your family's own culture.

Perhaps that is no different than the compulsion an adoptee feels to find her own people—that set of unknown relatives who hold the key to who the adoptee "really is." In one way, it can be the means to arrive at that feeling, "This is the way I've always been meant to be." But in another, sometimes disappointing way, that lack of instant recognition, that let-down feeling, wakes the searcher up to that reminder of disconnect. Culture is sometimes only what we make it out to be. And discovering what it is supposed to have been can be a disappointment.

The irresistible yet insidious lure of genealogy, though, will make sure I don't succumb to the temptation to walk away from it all before discovering that point. Of course I'm going to, like a moth to a flame, be drawn to the mystery. Nature, after all, abhors a vacuum—even a cultural one. 

The Stockholm Syndrome's Obverse

If the Stockholm Syndrome is the paradoxical development by hostages of sympathetic sentiments toward their captors, then, turning that definition on its head, what would you call it when it is the captors who develop sympathies for their hostages?

If you don't have an answer to that question just yet, hang with me. I promise this will lead to an observation about genealogy.

Any hostage situation in which the violent captor, in spite of behaviors calculated to incur severe reactions of fear, comes to be seen, in the eye of his captives, in a more positive and even sympathetic light can be dubbed a case of Stockholm Syndrome. While this curious psychological dynamic was dubbed with its name after the resolution of a bank robbery gone bad, in which the perpetrator took four bank employees hostage and held them captive for six days. After their release, the hostages not only refused to testify against their former captors, but actually began raising money for their defense.

As you likely have surmised, that bank robbery occurred in Stockholm, Sweden.

The label, Stockholm Syndrome, has since come to be applied to similar relationships formed in spite of other types of abusive relationships: human trafficking, sexual abuse, terror, and other forms of oppression.

In mulling over the situation regarding the King Stockton story, and some oral reports reflecting on the relationship between King, his mother Hester, and my McClellan ancestors—indeed, of any other genealogically-uncovered story of inordinate connections between slaves and masters—I've struggled to ascertain exactly what the psychological dynamics were between those household members, and even, in some cases, relationships between slave and master which went beyond that to actual relationships of kinship.

Wouldn't there be some form of resentment? I've thought of slave-holding men's wives: how did they feel, knowing the child just borne by one of their slaves was actually their husband's son? Wouldn't it be akin to the feeling a wife experiences in our own times when she discovers her husband has been cheating on her?

Or take it from the perspective of siblings: how would the white children of a slave-holder see their half-sibling from an enslaved member of their household?

And from an entirely different perspective, how would the enslaved woman feel, having been so abused? How did, for example, a Sally Hemings receive the amorous advances of a man who, in reality, also held the supreme and final word about her well-being?

In thinking this over, as it related to what I'm beginning to uncover in the story of King Stockton, it is difficult to juxtapose what surely must have been the case during that era of separated "races" with the tender endearment expressed through gestures reported in oral traditions in our family. I have discussed this entanglement with other researchers who have also traced lines of the enslaved, particularly of mixed-race heritage, and others have found inferences of care taken to give preference to such individuals who, eventually, could be demonstrated to actually be blood relatives.

But how did such victims feel about what they were going through? I know there has been a genre of fiction that romanticized the pre-Civil War era of the old South; my mother's disdain at her mother for reading such books is a distinct memory I have of both women, though I couldn't tell you the title of any such stories. On the other hand, to read histories of egregious mistreatment of human beings on the basis of their position as slaves hardly leads me to think that any enslaved person could have truly developed warm and accepting feelings toward their captors.

The search is on—at least for me—to find any indication that there was any middle ground in relationships between the enslaved and their slave-holding masters. One possible resource, as was mentioned by reader Lisa in a comment yesterday, is to consult Civil War diaries. Of course, there are several books on this same subject which I am considering, including one I hope to review later this month.

That tenuous interpersonal relationship, though, reminds me of the Stockholm Syndrome. In a situation so radically opposite of warm human emotion, the paradox is that—sometimes—those very accepting emotions do develop.

And yet, the Stockholm Syndrome, while a handy moniker to depict such interpersonal psychology gone wrong, is exactly the opposite of what we'd see in an intimate (I'm putting it delicately, here) master-slave relationship. The captive is not warming to the captor; it's the captor who is experiencing a shift of perception. Not, necessarily, toward the victim, but more likely something developing as an outward manifestation of an inward shift: the slave owner seeing himself in a more benevolent light—perhaps even to assuage conscience.

While I am still experimenting with this exploration of just how an enslaved person would feel toward the person enslaving her, I realize that turning the definition of the Stockholm Syndrome on its head does turn out to have a name of its own: the Lima Syndrome. Just as the Stockholm Syndrome got its name from the place where its strange behavior first manifested itself, the Lima Syndrome was also named for a violent event occurring in a city—this time, in Lima, Peru.

The history of the Lima Syndrome involved an event in which a militant group took hostage hundreds of high level government officials at an occasion at the home of the Japanese ambassador to Peru. The definition for the Lima Syndrome, following at least the initial few days of its ultimately tragic outcome, is said to have been when the abductors develop sympathy for their hostages. Although the originating incident itself doesn't clearly represent the later definition applied to it, the concept may be usefully applied to the curious psychological contortions demonstrated in some stories of slave-holding families.

Whether psychological models built on the backs of violent episodes in modern life apply to the interpersonal dynamics experienced in even the most benevolent of slave-holding households of a bygone century, I can't say. I think a lot more needs to be explored on this topic. Of course, I'll keep reading—and gratefully accepting any suggestions for helpful material to explore. But rather than dismiss those oral histories out of hand, I need to first seek out any other family members' memories of the stories about the family during that era. That family memory, as we've already seen in the long-standing disdain for George McClellan's second wife Celestia, tenaciously will not forget past wrongs; let's hope that tenacious grip on memory will also serve us in the more positive of those remembrances as well.   

The Power of Stories Repeated

Every now and then, I read things written by someone having absolutely nothing to do with genealogy, and yet—no surprise here—what I read leads back to thoughts about family history. Such was the case when, trying to catch up on my emails yesterday, I read a two-week-old blog post by marketing guru Seth Godin.

If you know anything about marketing, you may realize that successful selling is really about successful storytelling. Perhaps that was why, in one of his pithy daily posts, Mr. Godin remarked, "Forgotten stories have little power."

He went on to confirm the reverse: "Repeating stories (to ourselves and others)...makes those stories more powerful."

Thinking of the power of stories repeated reminded me of an old New York Times article by author Bruce Feiler. In "The Stories That Bind Us," published back in March, 2013, Mr. Feiler asserted that the best thing parents can do for their children is to "develop a strong family narrative." He cited a psychologist's observation that "the ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges."

That psychologist's observation, in working with children with learning disabilities, led researchers to develop a series of questions which they dubbed the "Do You Know?" scale—what people sometimes called the "20 Questions."

As one of the researchers, Robyn Fivush, later observed in an article she wrote for Psychology Today, "It is not knowledge of these specific facts [the answers to the twenty questions] that is important—it is the process of families sharing stories about their lives that is important."

Dr. Fivush urged families to "begin a family tradition of sharing the stories of our lives."

Her colleague in the research project, Marshall Duke—whose psychologist wife it was who had made the initial observation prompting him to develop the hypothesis—emphasized the same point: "Simply knowing the answers to questions will not produce the good outcomes" realized through their research. You cannot make your kids study for the "Do You Know?" test. Rather, "It is not the content of what is known that is the critical factor, but the process by which these things came to be known."

Because the twenty questions "test knowledge of things that children could not possibly have learned first hand"—in other words, details of the family's history before the children were even born, or were too young to personally remember—they would have had to receive it through person-to-person interaction, mainly through stories shared. Sharing stories takes time. And connects people.

Today is my last day in Florida, the land of my roots (well, at least the land of my grandmother's roots). It's likely all I'll be able to accomplish today will be to pack the bags and get us checked out of our hotel and into the airport shuttle.

Still, I can't help but think of one last episode on this epic family history research expedition. Like an encore to a wonderful performance, my mother's cousin—tour guide extraordinaire for our time, earlier this week, through the little town in northern Florida where my grandmother's family once lived—came back to visit me, once more.

After we had parted ways in Wellborn—she and her husband a day earlier than I and my long-suffering partner—the two of us had returned to visit my husband's sister and brother-in-law, relatively new year-round residents in Florida. From there, it was on to Orlando for business meetings for my better half.

Before we could even get to our next stop, this cousin had arrived home, still savoring thoughts of our wonderful visit to the land of our roots. I was hardly on the road when I got a message from her: "Call me right away." She had been thinking of all the family treasures she had received from my grandmother which she now wanted to pass on to me.

Underlying this thought process was the concern that someone would continue passing along the stories of our family's experiences over the generations. As we've seen all too clearly during our visit—and here, as I post my experience regarding the search for King Stockton—there are oral histories which have never found their way into print. There is no other way to preserve them than to insure that someone keeps the story alive for the next generation.

I had already known some of those unwritten stories. The story my mother told me, for instance, about the former slave who had had his story written in a book, was only something she told me. I have yet to find that book, but because of what I've been told, I know there was this certain man who did this certain thing. I want to pursue that story because I want to preserve that story.

But my mom's cousin had more of such stories to tell me. We talked almost constantly for the mere twenty four hours we were together, she telling me things that likely have not been written down anywhere—back when it happened, for the reason that it would meet with social censure, and recently, because we are at a loss for how to verify those "old stories."

With this in mind, she made arrangements to make the two-hour-long drive back to rendezvous with me at my hotel, bearing items which she dared not trust to the postal service. Her treasures included photo albums—thankfully with some pictures labeled—and various documents indicating the stepping stones of life's accomplishments.

No one in her immediate family was interested in these—besides, they weren't of her direct line, but materials concerning her aunt, who was my grandmother—and she knew I was keenly motivated to preserve such items.

She did, however, present them with one more question: was my daughter also taking an interest in these family stories? For, if she wasn't, who else could these family stories be passed down to? After all, it's in the repeating of these family stories that they provide strength. Remember, as Seth Godin observed, "Forgotten stories have little power."

It's in the stories remembered—and, thus, treasured—that we pass along the strength the next generation needs to grow and endure, despite adversity.

Genealogy With a Mouse

I've spent the last week away from home, while my husband attended an annual conference on behalf of our family business. The conference is held at Disneyland, which may help explain why, though the whole family doesn't necessarily attend the conference, we do come along for the ride.

Since I can't escape noticing details about history—the history of anything, as long as I'm involved with it—I couldn't help but reflect upon the few facts I picked up, last week, about the evolution of both Disneyland and its mainstay, Mickey Mouse.

It wasn't lost on me that Mickey Mouse's hit debut appearance happened to be when my mother was barely three years of age, making Mickey a prime possibility in the sphere of entertainment options during her growing-up years. Yet, I never heard mention of her awareness, as a child, of that phenomenon. At this point—Mickey is nearing ninety years of age this coming November 18—the Mouse is ubiquitous, but back in the late 1920s, though he may have enjoyed success through such groundbreaking creations as Steamboat Willie, the diffusion of one of the first of Walt Disney's entertainment innovations spread too slowly to catch up with at least that one little girl growing up in midwestern America on the eve of the Depression years.

Likewise, as I watched the streams of people flooding through the main gates at the Disneyland park, I found it just as curious to realize that the flagship theme park itself originated in just enough time to have been accessible during those same early childhood years in my own life. While I had heard about Disneyland in far-off southern California, at that time, I was growing up in New York—far too great a distance for our financially-challenged family to avail ourselves of such a dream vacation. And so, there was never a nexus between my family and the dream destination for what seemed to be every other kid in America.

Now, of course, Disneyland is a far cry from what it was in those early years of its creation—even, in fact, from its metamorphosis during my college years, when I was finally able to come see the place for myself. Today, we think nothing of plunking down the exorbitant bucket loads of cash it takes to do Disneyland—to say nothing of including the park hopper option to its partner attraction, the Disney California Adventure Park—a luxury impossible to imagine during my mother's childhood, or even mine.

It always fascinates me to juxtapose family history with that of the current events of an ancestor's lifetime. Yes, it puts our forebears' life experiences in perspective, true, but it also gives me an idea of how little those things that loom large in our own culture hardly seemed to make a dent in the daily lives of the ones who peopled our family tree.

Above: Metalwork detail from a garden outside the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland; photo courtesy Claire Stevens.