Diamonds In Diaries

Thinking about my mother in yesterday's post reminded me of the many journals she left behind. I had started transcribing them, simply in hopes of speeding up the reading and comprehension processes, owing to the difficulty I have, at times, in deciphering her handwriting. After a while, though, I had given up on the process. There was too much of life here and now demanding my attention.

However, with the arrival of Edna Tully's journal in the mail last month, my interest in transcriptions was reawakened. There is so much left to do to capture the essence of these two women, which inspires me to really get busy the minute I arrive home.

I've had other inspiration prompting me to get back to this business at hand: a fellow genealogy blogger has been slogging through this same process. Joan, of Roots'n'Leaves, has been diligently transcribing the 1850s era journals of her great-great grandfather, James P. McPherson, since at least her 2001 blog entry in which she confesses her sister's apt portrayal of her passion: "Some of her best friends have been dead for 200 years."

Journals and diaries are such a wonderful window on the souls of these departed ancestors. Even in the writing of my husband's relative, Edna Tully, though she completed her diary as a teenager, it projects a slice of her life at the time, endearing her to us--and allowing us to share the pathos of one of the great losses of her life, the death of her grandmother. There is nothing like reading the thoughts of a person, in his or her own words, and letting those written passages paint the picture of who that person is becoming to us, the future generations. I so want to be part of capturing that retro-vision and passing it along so others may know, too.

To Have a Heritage

While I'm continuing my research travels, having finished my time at the library in Lafayette, Indiana, I'd like to share a piece I wrote last year on the occasion of my mother's birthday. The photo to the left is from her professional portfolio from her young years, when her hopes were to be an actress, and when, still awaiting that moment when her dreams would become reality, she filled those starving-artist seasons with work as professional dancer, United Nations tour guide--or whatever would fill the pantry of the New York City apartment she shared with her fellow hopeful starlets-in-waiting. I've often thought of my mother as an enigma, yet at the same time, she has prompted many thoughts and observations, making me realize that what she gave me, for better or for worse, became the gems that I inherited as part of my family heritage. Remembering that we all have a heritage and we, ourselves, leave a legacy, I've often been reminded to hold dear whatever I've been given.
 
When I think back over the three decades I’ve dabbled in researching my family tree, I can’t help but wince remembering the biblical injunction against devoting oneself to “endless genealogies.” The message seems to be that it is of no lasting purpose to know one’s roots. My hope—or at least something I often wonder—is that there is a benefit to knowing one’s heritage.

I guess I was just born wanting to know my family’s story, though I’m nowhere in the league of bluebloods, cognoscenti, or even the lowly glitterati. Historically, the only ones deemed worthy of recording forebears were those who were making history. Many of those pacesetters were accorded notice because of agreements: covenants establishing a bloodline (kings), a right of service (priests), or a right of inheritance (nobility, landholders—or, in the case of the ancient nation of Israel, descendants of a particular promise-holder). In my case, none of these applied, but I firmly held to a blind faith that I was, indeed, some type of heritage-holder. To know this, to uncover my heritage, I needed to dig for my roots.

Though the notable Apostle Paul was the one who penned those dreary words, “endless genealogies,” in a note to his protégé, Timothy, it doesn’t mean that all hope of learning from one’s roots is now anathema. The Bible itself is replete with examples of family lines. Genesis, I Chronicles, and Matthew provide ample eye-glazing family litanies.

The thought hit me one day that there must be something to this genealogy stuff—else why would there be so much emphasis on it in the Bible? Take, for instance, the Old Testament habit of identifying a person not only by his name, but by his father’s name. In other words, a person would be listed by his father’s name too, if “John Smith” didn’t do the trick. “Oh! That John Smith!” If “John Smith, son of Joe Smith” didn’t provide enough detail, then another generation would be added. Of course, this system usually only applied to people making history, such as kings or priests—people already handily equipped to know such minutiae.

I can just see the name-calling match between prophets: Zechariah lists his resume to the third generation. Not to be outdone, the lesser-recognized prophet Zephaniah whips out his C.V. to the fifth generation, just in case anyone confuses him for that other Zephaniah.

Or take princes. Ziza, in I Chronicles 4:37, has five generations of predecessors listed to make sure no one becomes mistaken about just who is boss. To his credit, though, he had taken some significant action to get to the top of his class.

But me? Little ol’ me? The one who spent an entire student career preening on the heady insistence of teachers that each of us would become something special, that the world lay at our feet, that success was just there for the grabbing? That “me” who, despite those marvelous promises of well-meaning educator-mentors, spent adulthood as a mole burrowed in the anonymity of eight-to-five life? Where was my heritage?

Today is my mother’s birthday. While she is no longer here to enjoy the celebration, she provides a date for me to reflect on that heritage. I still haven’t found it—not in its entirety—but page by dusty page, I am uncovering the mystery that was hers to pass on to her children. I find the anomalies of life she passed down from her own misty childhood remembrances confirmed through the cold, impersonal dates and data of life records: census forms, death certificates, shipping records, land deeds. I uncover attitudes and prejudices passed along—broadly, from generation to generation, or unwittingly, from mother to daughter.

There may have been a time when people solved the problem of “which John Smith” by answering with the litany of “John Smith, son of Joe, son of Ed, son of Kevin.”

“Oh, that John Smith,” people may have nodded, remembering John’s great-grandfather.

I can’t say that many people today even know the names of their own great-grandparents.

In my quest to get to know just my own mother, I can be grateful that I am getting to learn those names. And I am getting to know a little more about each of their lives. In knowing where I have come from, I am reconstructing from lost memories my family’s own heritage. While I am not a king, not a priest, not a victorious warrior, even I can have a heritage. And it is the heritage, discovered, that benefits its possessors with significance.

Not As Planned

My daughter returned from a recent trip wearing a wrist band that declared, "Failure is not an option." Having, coincidentally, also heard the story of Thomas Edison, being interviewed by a journalist upon his umpteenth failure to discover a viable way to prevent the filaments inside his light bulb invention from disintegrating ("I have not failed...I have successfully identified 10,000 ways that won't work"), I should have gotten the hint. But I didn't. I felt like today's trip to Lafayette, Indiana, was a research failure.

I may as well resign myself to research trips that don't go as planned. Even I have written about (er, bemoaned) the futility of squeezing the genealogy research mode into a planning mold. You just can't predict the unpredictable. After all, if we knew what to expect, we wouldn't be searching for it, would we?

So count today's expedition as a successful elimination of resources for seeking answers to my Stevens family origins in Lafayette.

In all fairness, today had its good points. For one, this was our first trip to Lafayette that wasn't accompanied with gale-force winds, tornado warnings, or torrential rains. I got to spend some time with my husband on a pleasant drive. The mapquest directions didn't turn us around in circles. We arrived only one hour late. And the library was staffed with several eager volunteers, ready to help us with all our research questions.

We did pick up photocopies of some of the documents we were seeking on the extended Stevens family. We may possibly have located paperwork on some legal proceedings, too--something we'll clarify after actually reading through all the flowery handwritten pages we've had copied from the archives for future reference. And we did find some reminders that perhaps I should follow up on a possible sibling, Hugh Stevens, who followed in John's footsteps in leaving his native County Mayo in Ireland, traveling to New Orleans, then up to Lafayette, almost exactly two years after John Stevens made that same trip.

So why, oh why do I feel like I have not necessarily located all there is to locate on my John Stevens? The near-maddening propensity of record-keepers of that era to invariably switch spellings from Stevens to Stephens, coupled with the name-after preferences of good Catholics and their beloved saints, make me wonder if I have, indeed, found the right John Stevens. After all, there were others.

The five o'clock closing time came all too soon. Disappointed in our small booty after traveling half the continent on this hunt, we weren't ready yet to turn homeward. Still in search mode, we drove on from the library to the cemetery where some of the Stevens descendants are buried. Surely, we would be able to single out the distinctive obelisk that marked John Stevens' grave. But search as we did, we couldn't even find that "sure" thing.

When there is no room for failure, there is only one possibility to face up to: someday, soon, we'll just need to come back.

On the Way

By the time you read this, I'll be headed to Lafayette, in Lafayette, or headed back to Indianapolis from my research trip to Lafayette. I'm hoping to have something to report tomorrow on results.

In the bigger picture, who is John Stevens, anyhow? Such an insignificant life, a blip on the radar of past history. And yet, I yearn to know more about him. Regardless of his lack of significance for the rest of the world, he is, after all, one of my husband's ancestors.

I often wonder what drew him to Lafayette. When he left his homeland in County Mayo, Ireland, was it for sheer misery? Were the poverty-stricken conditions there his only motivation for choosing the risky route of crossing the ocean in the doubtful vessels of the mid-1800s? Or did he know exactly where he was going?

Was it for a specific job that he emigrated? Irish laborers became in demand as the westward expansion revved into action during that century. There were canals to be dug--later, railroads to be built, much of which work was achieved on the backs of recent immigrants. Could this have been John Stevens' calling?

Or did he first arrive in New Orleans, merely hoping to escape his prior lot in life, not knowing at that point what his next step might be? I recently learned that there was a large community in that port--but I have yet to learn from that chapter of regional history why that might have been so. There is so much to learn as I repeat this journey with the ancestor I've never met.

One mere afternoon at a small research library may not reveal much. But I'm hoping that I will have some news tomorrow to share--news of research progress. But isn't that the hope of every family historian?

Photo-genealogic

With so much hope for unlocking at least a bit of the secrets of our family's past, we've traveled this week to Indiana. That's where my husband's Stevens line originates in this country, with the arrival of John Stevens from his native County Mayo in Ireland. Via the port of New Orleans, up the mighty Mississippi and tributaries until he reached the Wabash River port of Lafayette, Indiana, this great-great grandfather was now ready to call this destination home. We're hoping to reach him here--or at least some shred of evidence of his life here--one hundred sixty years afterward.

Although our actual research time at the library in Lafayette is not to happen until Friday, we've already made some stops along the way. Our first stop was to visit Stevens relatives in Chicago area, hoping to gain some insight into a collection of century-old photographs. In particular was one portrait of a distinguished elderly gentleman in what may have been either a military uniform or that of a police department. I am so utterly uninformed about uniform design of the turn of the last century (not to mention, unaware of the actual date of this particular photograph) that I am not sure I have the right person at the right time.

I was hoping to discover that the photogenic subject of this portrait was John Tully, father-in-law of the branch of the Stevens family that moved from Indiana to Chicago. Unfortunately, in showing the portrait to my husband's aunt, who already owns photographs of the man, the reaction was negative, or at least inconclusive. We will need to do some comparisons with other photographs of the man. John Tully served with the South Park Police for many years, and family oral tradition held that he also served in the Civil War in his younger years. The photo is definitely of an older man. The uniform doesn't appear to be of the type worn by police personnel of the time, but appears more like military garb. It just might be that we will have to face up to the fact that we don't, after all, know who the photograph portrays.

Looking through old photographs has its predictable effect on those interested in such memorabilia. Seated around the kitchen table the other night were three Stevens cousins, two spouses, and a beloved aunt married to a now-departed member of the previous generation of this Stevens line. I daresay every one present had a love for history, including a now-retired college professor who has devoted years of his life to preserving one specific sliver of "modern" culture through meticulously-documented collections. But no matter how hard we wished to discover something of significance in this collection of photographs, those turn-of-the-century mementos did not represent anyone we could identify.

Research journeys are full of hope, and we have days of potential discoveries ahead us of us yet. But it is hard to relinquish the hope that this treasure trove I've been loaned would produce a research breakthrough. How I wanted it to work. Whoever those hundred-year-old likenesses belong to, they do not, at this point, appear to lead to our immediate family lines. Genealogy requires a careful, documented, logical approach to research. My heart wishes for my wildest dream's discoveries to be now. While my mind tells me to let it go and move on, my heart wishes I had made the connection.

Pivot Point

It is only half the story to say that the power of books is through their doorway to the Great Conversation with the past. The real impact will only be seen in what we have to say to the future.

It takes faith to talk to the future. We don’t know that there even will be one. Yet, from one devastating epoch in treacherous history to another, there have thankfully been those who have had the faith that time would still move on—that there would be someone at the receiving end to talk to.

From one of those tumultuous past eras comes a vignette I’ve often pondered. It is from the life of Jane Lucretia D’Esterre. One of those stories that you just have to stumble upon, hers was one I found deep in the middle of a book I was reading about something else.

How can any romantic resist the pathos of a story that begins, “Jane Lucretia first heard of the duel that shattered her life when friends carried her dying husband into the house.”

There is every reason to be gripped by the story. The young woman—vivacious, talented, beautiful—is just the one to win hearts. Married to a man with a promising political future, she is the mother of two young children. Circumstances, however, rip her away from the contentedness of the good life.

“The year was 1815, the time of Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. Dueling was still legal....”

“Devastated” was not an adequate word to describe this woman’s reaction to events. She fled her country to the north, finding safe haven physically, but not emotionally. Her tragedy brings her to the brink of attempting suicide. But for what might have seemed mere happenstance, she would have taken that step. Somehow, she snapped back to her senses, returned home, and resumed life.

Life, though, was now different. She had found the Lord. Things didn’t change immediately, but in that imperceptible way that it often does, healing took place. A few years later, she met and married a man whose surname many will recognize: Captain John Grattan Guinness, youngest son of Dublin brewer Arthur Guinness.

The story isn’t yet over. In the telling of it by her great-great-grandson Os Guinness in his book, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, he describes her as “unusual for several reasons.” He explains that she “conscientiously prayed for her descendants down through a dozen generations.”

But Dr. Guinness is only her great-great-grandson. That means there are eight generations still to come. Her prayer is yet to be fully answered. That’s the measure of one woman’s faith.

The trajectory of my faith—or yours—may not be as remarkable. After all, these are tumultuous times. There is one thing to keep in mind, however: the beginning of the trajectory marked the pivot point from past to future. It takes a decisive action to turn our attention from our heritage—receiving it, benefiting from it, enjoying it—to our legacy. It takes work to pass something on.

We are the pivot points between the turbulence of the past and the possibilities of the future. We carry the faith forward when our actions show our trust that our work will bring some good to light for those yet to come.

It takes faith to believe in a future. But if we don’t work for that future, too, our trajectory will be very short, indeed. While faith without works may be dead, works without faith are near impossible. As much as those of the past have spoken to us in the Great Conversation of our heritage, we need to speak to those who are yet to come.

I had read this book almost a year ago, and first shared these thoughts on another blog. While thinking about the family research I'm traveling to do this week, I was reminded once again that we must not only remember the past, but be mindful that we are also doing this research for our future.

This One’s For You, Sheri

Not all genealogists are writers—and not all writers are genealogists—but all genealogy bloggers need to write at least fairly regularly.

I enjoyed stumbling upon The Educated Genealogist, a blog by Sheri Fenley. Though Sheri and I actually live in the same town, I’ve never met her (incredibly, considering I managed to find her "pin" in the midst of the worldwide web haystack). I can’t remember how I stumbled upon her blog, but I’m glad I did. Though she doesn’t know me, Sheri is the one who steered me to Geneabloggers through her article a month ago, which led me to be introduced to that community of writers this past weekend.

Sheri combines family research and fun in her writing. She’s the one who posted about the great pie-making generator. And I appreciate her motto, borrowed from William Butler Yeats: “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” Just looking through her post archives gives you an idea of what a spark of life is resident in her inspirations.

Last Friday, Sheri complained about writer’s block. Oh, I don’t know…it could all be in fun. Regardless, there is something ominous about that dreaded syndrome, even when we are joking about it.

Just so happens, same day she mentioned that, I ran across a couple great posts in a non-genealogy blog I frequent. Written (and occasionally hosted) by Michael Hyatt of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Intentional Leadership is a six-times-weekly blog that, not surprisingly, provides timely writing tips. Last Friday must have been one of those times.

On that same writer’s-block Friday, Mr. Hyatt hosted a guest post by Martyn Chamberlin of Two Hour Blogger. The article toys with the notion of productivity and comes to the conclusion that “productivity is overrated.” How’s that for salve for a writer’s soul?

The other post was also a guest article by Jeff Henderson, pastor of a cutting-edge church and ministry in Georgia. Now, pastors are known more for their public speaking than for their written material, but they do need to know how to produce that writing, nonetheless. This pastor came up with a technique which he calls “The Ten Minute Storm,” a way to grab those fleeing ideas and tackle them to the ground, er, paper. He found a way to hone your message, but the technique also frees you up to Just Do It: Write.

Sometimes, less is more. Writer’s block may not be seen as a gift, but perhaps that is what it actually is. When I get stuck writing, I go do something I love. Instead of writing about genealogy, I do genealogy! A refreshing break can be what the brain is crying for. Trade your productivity woes in for some writer’s WD-40. You’ll know what to use. After a well-applied spritz of that liquid magic, I’m able to unstick and come back to write about it.