I have a confession to make. I'm addicted to Who Do You Think You Are which airs on TLC Tuesday nights at
9pm. And before you ask, the answer is
no. It has nothing to do with the
particular "stars" the show has chosen to feature. The producers could have picked random
members of my local golf course maintenance team and I’d be just as
intrigued. Why? Because unless your family has that
particular and oh so studious Aunt Betty who's done all the work for you, I'm
willing to put a Starbucks wager on the fact there’s a lot of stuff you don't
know about your family.
I've always been fascinated by family history
and as a young girl, I loved to listen to my grandma tell stories about our
family. Then again, I have a great Aunt
Bunny and an Uncle Duck so it could've been I thought my grandma was reading me
a fairy tale. And therein lies the
problem many of us face when we start climbing our family tree. As dear as those memories are to me, the fact
that none of the real details about Bunny and Duck ever got written down
doesn't make for a very complete family tree now that I’m old enough to really
care about preserving history. Not to
mention my grandma’s been gone ten years.
For the past several weeks I’ve been an
active occupant of my family tree, climbing up and down branches, looking for
links between limbs and researching new growth.
While I attempted a similar thing many years ago, this time around, I’ve
been met with tremendous success and the journey’s been nothing short of
amazing. For all of the unsavory avenues
we can find ourselves travelling on the Internet, the lengths to which the
National Archives, the Office of Military Records and many similar
organizations have gone to to update and strengthen their databases is
incredible. To date I’ve learned of men
of tremendous character who literally set aside their livelihoods on a moment’s
notice and walked arm in arm with their neighbors and brothers into battle. I’ve learned of the women that loved them. I’ve found Union and Confederate soldiers
sharing a branch, and kissing cousins. I’ve got archived documents to line the path and
verify the good and the not so pretty branches of my tree.
As you might have guessed, the Bunny and Duck
from my grandma’s stories weren't actual names I was going to find on a 1930
Census form all these years later. In
fact, names are a funny beast on this journey.
While I remember laboring over decided what to name my own child, I
never once thought about how that name might get mangled years down the
road. We have a Laura turned Lula turned
Lulie. A Siota turned Scota turned Siot
turned Sophie and a Dilly, and Effie, a Mally and a Barbee. But wait for it. Barbee’s a guy! My Grandpa!
In one census they spelled his name correctly but listed him as a
girl. In another they changed his name
all together. On the other side of my
family, my great grandpa came through Ellis Island in 1910. My great aunt documented her father’s life
story in her thesis work when she was in college and while I remember she and
my grandma talking about how names often got changed, it wasn’t until I found
his immigration documents and saw it with my own eyes that it made sense to
me. The men and women serving as
document clerks at Ellis Island often changed names based on their own levels
of education and understanding. For
example, my great grandpa got on a boat in Patras, Greece as sixteen-year-old
Demetrious Eusthathis Kakavecos and stepped into New York as James Kallas. There’s a note on his immigration paperwork
that he contested his new name and his real name is written off to the side in
a different penmanship than that of the rest of the document. A U.S. census taken just ten years later
lists him by his correct name, married to my great grandma, a couple of kids in
tow. Hhmm.
Speaking of penmanship, when you start to
research your own tree, get ready for some scrolls and cursive the likes of
which deserve to be preserved by the National Archive. It’s like the smaller the lines and the
ledger, the more decorative the recorder tried to write. Maybe these clerks were trying to make up for
the sins of their Ellis Island document-recording kin. Who knows?
In an effort to show the world their gorgeous penmanship, more a’s and
e’s and o’s and i’s and c’s got flipped than pancakes at the local breakfast
joint on a Sunday. I can only imagine
one of my great great grandma’s telling someone standing on her front porch to
kiss her grits. We’re southern. Way
southern. I’m pretty sure one of the
ladies in my tree would have said something like that.
So, too, will be the story of your tree. There will be branches to keep, dead limbs
you want to hide and leaves that either catch the light oh so perfectly or
fight to exhaust it all together. Yet
through it all, if you’re willing to wade in and just start climbing, there’s a
puzzle waiting to be put together that has your name written all over it.
Indeed I've become my family’s Aunt Betty and
if anything, all of this research has shown me that it’s probably just as
well. I’ve been called Mary Beth, Theresa
Beth and Betta Ann numerous times in my forty-three years so I’m certain I’ll
get listed as Betty Ann in a census one day.
And while it won’t technically be correct, I have no doubt it will all
work out in the end. I’m counting on the
fact my great great grandchild will be a climber.
