We study our family history to discover who we are and where we came from. Our ancestors want us to know the stories of their lives--their struggles, their loves, and their joys. They want to be remembered and to know that their lives mattered to someone. How did I get into this? I was the odd kid who listened to Mom and Dad when they reminisced about the old days and the stories their parents and grandparents told them. Where did they live? What were the maiden names of the women in their family? How many brothers and sisters did they have? Where did they work? What were their nicknames? Do I look like them? Bits of their DNA are in our genetic makeup. So one day in 2016, Aunt Donna called me. The conversation went something like this: Donna: Hey, Bon, this family hasn't had a family reunion since 1986, I'm going to have a reunion here at my house in June 2017, and you're going to help me. Me: Of course, I'd love to help. Who else is on the reunion committee? Donna: You and me. Well, okay, then. I considered what I could contribute to a reunion in Clinton, TN, from my home near Cleveland, Ohio. How about a family tree, so we can all see the names of our aunts and uncles and grandparents? That's all genealogy is, right? Names and dates on a chart? Not exactly. I started with parents and their siblings, grandparents and great grandparents whose names I knew. They led me back to where I am now--6,400 people on a family tree that reaches back to royal families of the 1300s in the Shaw and Knowlton family lines on Grandpa Jones' side. When all my retirement activities--book discussions, enrichment classes at local colleges, day trips, visits to see relatives, and dining out with friends (I highly recommend retirement!)--came to a screeching halt during the pandemic, I had to find another pastime. Genealogy is something I can do on my iPad from my living room sofa. Who could have predicted that Edward Hall Jones, a machinist in a factory who rented a home in Cleveland's inner city and had an affinity for spending his evenings at the corner bar, could trace his lineage back to King Edward IV of England? FRUSTRATIONS #1 Size of Families Before the 1960s, a "small" family would be considered less than four children. The families in our tree average between eight and fifteen offspring, in contrast to the average family today of 3.14 children. #2 What's in a Name I've been spending a lot of time in the 1600s. The naming patterns of Colonial America were guidelines that parents followed to name their new baby.
Common in our family tree are names like Elizabeth, John, Mary, Margaret, William, Sarah, and Thomas, for example. Some names for girls that would be considered odd today came from our Puritan ancestors: Deliverance, Zerviah, Mehitable, Godsgift, Patience, Freedom, Content, Freegift, Freelove, Remember, Liberty, Providence, Hosanna, and Tolerance. For the boys: Obadiah, Hannibal, Jireh, Mordecai, Ezekiel, Ebenezer, Bassingbourne, and Resolved. Parents often reused names. For example, a new baby might be given the name of a previous child who had died very young to honor the child. #3 Surnames and Their Spellings Spelling of surnames was not standardized in the days of yore. Each generation seemed to choose how to spell their surnames. For example, just to name a few: Morton changed to Martin Belconger to Conger Kytson to Kitson Reynel, Renaud, Rennels, Runnells to Reynolds Hopper, Hoopur, Huppe to Hooper Jenks, Jencks to Jenckes FitzRandulf, Fitz Randolph, FitzRandulff, and many more variations to FitzRandolph #4 Royal Titles To my delight, royal titles showed up in our background. "WOW!" I thought, "I need to keep track of all these guys in a notebook." I stopped tracking them when almost everyone had titles back to the 1300s. The peerage, or titled nobility, were a group of powerful nobles, inter-related by blood and marriage and were very protective of their lands and their rights. As an American, I was baffled by titles like Sir, Duke, Earl, Viscount, Baron, Baroness, Lord, Lady, and so on. What do they all mean and who is higher than whom? Many of them have family crests and are from some of the oldest names in Great Britain: Coggeshall, Throckmorton, FitzRandolph, Jenckes, and Whipple, just to name a few. #5 Old Time Handwriting Documents previous to the 1800s were all handwritten and have faded over time. Their style of writing is unfamiliar to our modern eyes. Trying to make out names and dates on these old-timey pages that have been scanned into .pdf format from ancient records give me eye strain. #6 Making Sense of Vital Statistics Vital statistics, including birth, marriage, and death, are the bread and butter of genealogists, but they weren't officially kept by government agencies until the 1800s to eary 1900s. There were no census records in the United States until 1790 and those gave only the name of the head of household until 1850. Researchers are dependent on church records, family Bibles, or some haphazard record office. I have found as many as seventeen different marriage dates for one couple, including some after the death of one of the partners and there were burials occurring a year before the person's date of death. There is really no way of verifying online the exact date of these events. So, yes, sometimes I had to make educated guesses. JOYS #1 Possible Distant Cousins I confess to being a bit of a history buff. Our direct line of ancestors has proven to be interesting enough and I hope to tell you about them in the coming weeks, but there are some possible distant cousins who were notable in history:
Joy #2 Finding Our Story Imagine crossing the Atlantic Ocean with everything you can think of that you might need in a new land. Your ship is about 100 feet long and 70 feet wide and you share the space for ten weeks with a hundred other people. You said good-bye to your loved ones forever. You have no idea what the future holds in this wilderness where you have to start your life from scratch. You will have to build a home for your family and create a community where you all can live together amicably. How will feed and protect your family? You have to make everything you need from the forest around you. There are no radios or cell phones. Your wife, daughters, sons, and neighbors are dying from a host of infectious diseases and starvation. Native Indians are becoming hostile. Not quite like the picturesque Thanksgiving we studied in school. That life change takes courage and commitment, but it also brings the satisfaction that you are following your conscience and your faith. If we listen, we can hear their voices call across the centuries. Samples of Old Handwritten Records
1 Comment
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Bonnie EastonHi! I am a Jones cousin, daughter of Evelyn Jones Easton. Since retiring as a reference librarian after 20 years, I have become a genealogy addict. Our ancestors want to tell us their stories.
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