Digging In The Past

   A few years back I started getting into family history or genealogy and digging around to find out where and who I came from. It was fun at first and I was able to beg and borrow some great info and Photos from older family members. Some times it was easy and other times very hard as many people felt I was messing around in areas that were better left in the past. When I first started in this little hobby I had dial up internet service so I would have to borrow pictures and paper work to scan the items at home and then return it to its owner at a later time. Many people do not like parting with items for fear they will never get them back so often it was very hard to convince someone to loan you precious bits of the families past. I found by my raiding family photo albums and boxes of old papers I found information that I could never find on the internet. It was like a hunter hunting for prey or shopping tell ya drop type feeling. It quickly became an addiction as many things do with me and in no time it was all I could think about I would spend hours on line scrolling through file after file and picture after picture searching for bits and pieces trying to make each person from the past whole again. With dark circles under my eyes and a numbness in my ass I had to take a break from my hobby because I had let it consume me and become not a hobby but an addiction.

   It has been about ten years or more since I put all my family info I had gathered into a large plastic bin and stashed it away in my basement and there I forgot about it for a time. The past few years I have lost some people who were and still are very special to me and the loss of those loved ones made me remember that plastic bin hidden away in the basement. Thinking of those I had lost I decided to dig that bin out of storage and opened it up with the notion of just adding the obituary info and photos of the latest family losses. As I opened the lid and thumbed through the piles of info the memories of people from the past flooded back. Memories of my Grandfather and the couple of years he lived with us and all the things he taught me. My Grandmother and how she would cry when it came time for us to leave after a visit. The houses people had lived in the cars they drove the holidays we had all spent together and Oh! so much more.  I had dug that plastic bin out only to add a few bits of info mind you but sitting here two weeks after I opened the lid I find myself with stacks of info spread around me and I am once again consumed with trying to catalog all this info so that the people from the past will not be forgotten and the people from the future will be able to make some since out of what I have gathered.

   I only wish the people from the past would have made little notes on photos as to who where and when the photo was taken. I guess if they had made it to easy for us who like to dig in the past it would somehow not be as much fun but sometimes it can be frustrating. I do know that it is like no other type of high when you at last are able to place a person in the family tree with info to back it up to anyone who wants to dispute the fact they belong there.

   I do have to say it has become so much easier now than when I first started or those who started before me for that matter. Those that started before me would have to physically go to the court house or grave yard to retrieve info. I am very lucky to be able now to access info just by entering the right phrase into my internet search. Pictures are downloaded and obits are there for the taking if you know where to look. My Aunt Letha my dads sister started the Thomas family Genealogy many years ago, back when she had to do leg work and use snail mail to get the info. She compiled a huge amount of info that she left to a cousin of mine leaving her with the daunting task of sorting through boxes and boxes of info putting it into a blog she started so she could share it with the whole family. She has done so much work loading photos and such to the blog and it is wonderful to see faces of people I have never met and those I have bringing them back to my thoughts. Many of those old yellowing cracked photos I would swear were me or other family members who came way after those people in the photos were long gone. The resemblances can often be scary in a way like looking at your reflection in a mirror but 20 years before you were born.

   Dead ends can be hard to deal with. A dead end is when you have a family member that you can not find any info, such as their parents or where they came from or how they got here. I have a few dead ends that haunt me as I dig and dig to find just a thread of info on their past and come up with diddly squat. Some lines of my history have been widely research by others making those groups of people easy to put in the family tree, but there are some branches that seem to be or have big secretive pasts like they were beamed down from outer space and just appeared one day and started a family. With people so adamant to come to the new world some stowed away on ships or lied about who they were. Many did not speak English or could even write  their own name so they had to tell someone their name and that person wrote it down. Many mistakes were made and many families names were changed or altered because of this fact. Framer is a name in my family tree that has been butchered many times over the years. The Framer line of my family came from Germany and with broken English I guess it must have sounded strange to those who did not speak German. In my research I have found it spelled Foramer Fromer Frymer Frimer etc.  It can make it hard when digging in old manifests and files to be sure it is the person I am looking for. Often one small clue like another family member listed with them helps to prove it is the person and I am on the right track.

   In digging and finding out how those brave people from my past came to this country often with only the clothes on their backs  just astounds me and the many reasons that brought them here. Some came to gain fortune some came to escape governmental tyrants politics,religion, even to escape prison terms each had their own reasons and motivations for making the trip. Some came as indentured servants serving 10 years or more basically as slaves to the person who paid for their passage on a ship. Not all came first class and many came with nothing more than a dream of some sort. I know what a hassle it was for me to move from state to state  or from place to place but my moves although problematic were nothing like what they dealt with and many were not spring chickens when they did so. I have found members of the family in their 70's and 80's making the trip. I think about the women pregnant and having children in the bowls of ships with the cargo. How unsanitary it must have been or them having to deal with that time of the month. Having to be often packed in like animals with little to eat of drink. Many died on the trip over and never made it to their destination. Those brave people traveling many days to get here and not knowing what to expect or what would meet them at the shore. 

   I find a great deal of pride knowing I came from such people who had a dream of something bigger and were willing to suffer the hardships to achieve that dream. They came form all over the map and their blood runs through my veins. I am German I am Scottish I am Nordic I am English I am Jewish I am Italian I am a melting pot of people from many lands and I want to know as much about them as I can. I am trying to not let this little hobby become an addiction again as it was, am I able to do that you may ask? all I can say to that is time will tell, time will tell.