Your Relatives are not Famous, and Neither are Mine.

Have you ever noticed how those people who believe in reincarnation were always someone famous in their past lives? They were a King, or a Martyr, or some other historical figure of great importance. I've had several people tell me they were Henry V, or Charlemagne, or even someone like Anne Boleyn in their previous life. They're never a serf, or a slave. They're never someone of dubious history, or someone downright evil. No one has ever, to my knowledge, claimed to be Genghis Khan, or Rasputin, or Robespierre. No one has ever claimed to be Hitler reincarnated.

The same is true of many family historians. They love to claim famous ancestors. So much so, that many so called genealogists actually doctor their family trees to support the tie to a legendary individual, instead of acknowledging that most of us are descended from the shoulders on which great men stood, rather than the great men themselves.

Case in point: Several nights ago I was at a dinner with a group of friends. A friend and I were discussing genealogy when another friend interrupted with the story of his supposedly researched family tree. Turns out this man sitting at that very dinner table was related to two Medieval Kings! Imagine! And incidentally, they were two kings that weren't related to each other! Imagine how blue the blood is in his veins! Wow. Of course, when asked how exactly they connect to my friend, he is unsure, even if it's on his father or mother's side.

Here's the thing, the vast majority of Americans tend to claim English royalty in their lineage, but there have been only 69 rulers of England, and only 40 since the Normans invaded in 1066. By contrast, there have been 44 United States Presidents.

We all want to be important, and genealogy is popular in the United States because we have a desire to find out where we came from. Humans are social and want to associated with a community, and we want to produce, or be, something of value to our world.

I'm like everyone else. I would love to find someone great in my family tree. I'd love to be related to a King, or an Indian Princess, or even a United States President-- preferably a well respected and loved one. However, to doctor my tree to create the illusion of a famous relative is dishonest, and I would always know it's not true. A hollow win isn't really a win at all, and it diminishes what so many of our other ancestors did do, which was to create a new life for themselves in a new, uncharted world. That's pretty legendary, even if their names are not remembered by the masses.

How The Story Ends

Until last week, I had never seen a photo of my grandfather before he was married to my grandmother. I had never seen him as a little boy. I knew he was born in Kentucky. I knew all the dates and names there are to know. I even found out he'd married someone before my grandmother, and that my father has a half brother out there somewhere. Family secrets just don't hold up against public records and a dedicated genealogist.

I was working online when another woman contacted me through Ancestry.com, and said she was a distant cousin, and had photos of my grandfather as a boy. She sent me copies, and I waited with baited breath for the ultimate goal of any genealogist, the elusive "identified photograph." When they arrived, I poured over them, and then proceeded to digitize them so I could put them on the site.

As I was loading them I saw it. I'd looked at the photo a dozen times at least, but this time I saw him. My grandfather, young, maybe not yet twenty, smiling the same smile my father has, the same smile I look at every day in the mirror. There he was, younger than I am now, before my grandmother, before my dad. A life full of opportunity yet to be lived.

His life flashed through my mind in the form of all the photos I'd seen of what came after this one. Marrying my grandma, enlistment, the war, the lifetime of service to Ac Delco in Flint, Michigan, riding motorcycles with my dad, the deaths of his parents, the accident that would claim his arm and make him the old man I knew in my childhood, the loss of my grandma, and finally, his own death.

Here I was looking at this photo of a young man with everything in front of him, and yet it was all behind him now. In that instant, I felt many things, among them, loss.

My "Gramps" died when I was only twelve, and his grumpiness in those days made me afraid of him. I really never knew him at all. What I would give to sit next to him with these photos and say, "Who was that?" "Where was this taken?" "How old are you here?" The stories connected to these photos are lost forever.

We look at photographs everyday and comment to each other on Facebook, or in family groups as they're passed around, "Oh, you look so young there," or "Wow, you looked so beautiful that day, how happy you were." Yet there will come a time when nobody knows anyone in the photos we leave behind. Someday, a descendant of mine will look at an old photo of me, taken when I was young, with my whole life ahead of me, and that descendant will already know how the story ends.

YOU don't belong

Recently, I had someone tell me that I wasn't as "much of" a member of a genealogical line because I didn't have the same last name as the ancestor we were both researching.
It went something like this:

Me: "So X Harding married my Grandfather and moved to Michigan."

Them: "So you're not a Harding then?"

Me: (registering confusion) "Excuse me?"

Them: "You're not a Harding then, because your grandma was a Harding, not your grandpa."

Me: "How does that make me not a Harding?"

Them: "You don't have the name, so you're not a part of the family anymore."

Me: (Stunned silence)

WHAT?

This makes no sense at all. I'm female. If I get married, does that mean I'm no longer a "part" of my parents family? I think my mother would argue that I'm still her daughter regardless of what surname I have, and moreover, I think she still considers herself her father's daughter, even though she has my father's name.

Moreover, if I share a common ancestor with another person, and neither of us have that name, does that mean we aren't a "part" of the family line? Should we then not even bother with any maternal lines, because, after all, we aren't a part of those families?

And furthermore, as an unmarried woman, should I NOT bother researching my father's line, since eventually I will no longer be a "part" of that line?

Seriously, where do people get these theories? Why does it matter what my last name is when researching family HISTORY? I'm as much my great grandmother's ancestor as I am my great grandfather's. DNA and genes hold that truth to be self evident.

Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to do genealogy.

I think I'm related to a Serial Killer

My Great Great Grandmother was married four times by the time she was fifty.

By the time she died herself, I *think* this was her name:

Adaline Holiday Simpson Matthews Gager Smith

I say *think* because her fourth husband, whom she married in 1895, was dead by 1905, and she was still listed as widowed in the 1910 Census. Still, she didn't die until approx 1916 which left her a whopping 6 years to get married again, and since I can't find her dead under any of the above names, I can only assume she probably had another one.

Now, in Genealogy it's fairly common to find people married more than once. Childbirth claimed a lot of women's lives, and I have a couple male ancestors who were married three times ... but even that's a bit more uncommon.

Here's the real kicker though.

Each of my great great grandmother's husbands died before she married the next one.

Died.

Of What?

Nobody knows.

But I think I do.

My Love/Hate of the Little Green Leaf

Do your research, get it right, assume the negative.

My family tree is on Ancestry.com. I love that my entire family tree is online. I love that when I put a name up a little green leaf might pop up to tell me someone else is researching that person's name. I really love when the little green leaf is right and it connects me to a person with photos of my long dead ancestor. These are the moments when the little green leaf shines like the sun. Screen shots like this, from my actual tree, used to bring a tear to my eye.



Look at all those leaves!!! Little green dots of hints, leading me to more names and leaves! Ahh.

But after this, it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

Ancestry.com is a very useful tool for an experienced genealogist, but it's also a mecca for the ill informed and inexperienced to really muck things up for the rest of us.

We've all seen the commericals of the novice ancestry.com user who just went to the site, entered his grandpa's name and a leaf popped up that connected him to the tree of another member who was researching his family. BINGO! Instant family tree.

The only problem is that sometimes, indeed, many of those times, the "leaf" doesn't lead you to YOUR ancestor, but to someone else with that same name. With one simple click, you've now linked your ancestor to a family that doesn't belong to him, or to you.

We, as humans, are all fairly unique, but our names are not.

Here's a visual. A leaf hint popped up recently on this ancestor of mine.


This was the hint. Can you see why I would reject this "hint" for this ancestor???


The key is in the dates, and in history. When did the Revolutionary War happen? When did my ancestor die?

It's kinda hard to be a Revolutionary War Patriot, and therefore be on the Patriot's Graves Record, when he was dead over 100 years BEFORE the war happened.

If you would have linked this hint to this ancestor, I want you to stay away from Ancestry. com for EVER. I'm not kidding. NEVER GO THERE.

If you would have linked this hint to this ancestor and you are already on Ancesty.com, know that I am on there and I hate you, especially if I'm related to you in some distant fashion that makes our trees intersect. Now I have to weed through all your muck, and eventually I'll have to keep ignoring the hints linking me to your tree because I'll know your "research" is all crap. Each time I click "ignore" because of you, I'll be thinking ill thoughts of you.

Don't trust the leaf. Do your research, get it right. Or risk my wrath.

Life, Doesn't it go by in an Instant?

In the summer of 2002 I worked at a tiny little theatre in Newark, OH. It was my first "professional" design job and one that I was thrilled to have. It was your typical summer stock theater. Young, newly minted theater professionals, and some, like me, were still students, gathering together forty minutes outside of Columbus to do some shows. The community was small but loved their little theater. I designed Lend Me A Tenor, Guys and Dolls, and Driving Miss Daisy that summer.
I also lived with two people, Cathleen Oliva, a fellow student at the University of Florida and easily one of the funniest women I've ever had the privilege to know, and a young New York based performer named Matthew Trombetta.
Matthew had a quick wit, and lots of opinions. He also had an uncanny way of making the most mundane issue a hysterically funny story. He was full of life in that kind of way you typically only see in movies. That summer in Ohio he drove a beat up car he nicknamed "the greyhound" and carried a concrete block around to make sure the parking brake didn't disengage and let the car roll away. He would unabashedly make himself the butt of a joke, knowing that the ability to laugh at yourself was the essence of true happiness.

After that summer, we fell out of touch, this being the days before Facebook and Myspace, but I still thought of him, and knew through the tiny grapevine that is the theatre world that he had moved to that town in Ohio, and had started to make that little theater his life.

It was in that little town forty minutes east of Columbus where he built a life, and it was there that it ended two weeks ago. Matthew Trombetta, only 30 years old, died on stretch of highway between his work and his home, the victim of a head on collision with a drunk driver.

The summer I spent in Ohio was better because of him. My life was better for having known him. The world is a darker place now that he's gone.

Sleep Well Matthew. You'll be missed all the days of my life.