And other family secrets in the daily news.
Decades ago, when I’d ask my mother questions about her grandmother’s brother, I’d get the same answer everytime—Edward Forshay was an actor and his wife was a famous actress.
Orson had had enough. Bedridden and depressed, he had lived the last few months of his already-long life tied to an oxygen tank. His pain was almost intolerable. He seemed to have given up. Then someone unexpected came along.
That someone was Cathie English, an English teacher at Nebraska’s Aurora High School who walked into Orson’s room at the Hamilton County nursing home.
Hitting the road? See just what a family historian needs to turn a home on wheels into home sweet traveling home.
Say you’ve decided which RV suits you—trailer, camper, fifth wheel, or motorhome. Now it’s time to pore over brochures, really visit the models. Does this one have enough closet space? Sufficient outside storage?
The morning was not unlike other mornings that Adele Marcum had spent with her grandmother. Together, they worked in the kitchen creating homemade bread, while Adele’s grandmother regaled her with stories about their ancestors. But this time their conversation would lead to a special discovery—a famous ancestor in their family tree.
What happens when there is no heir apparent, but the found item is just too good to dismiss?
It happens sometimes. I work on an orphan heirloom case in an attempt to locate the descendants of the original owner of a family treasure only to discover that there are no descendants. The line has died out—and possibly even the branches most closely associated with it. What then?
Selective breeding. If you think it’s a solely foreign concept, don’t kid yourself. It happened everywhere—even, as one researcher discovered, in America.
My grandfather died when his wife and children were still quite young and America was in the grip of the Great Depression. At the time, fatherless families had few options for financial assistance.
Family history clues can be anywhere. An old recipe card may note “these were always served by cousin Mary McGuire” or “Aunt Susie made this every Thanksgiving.” So where do you go from there?
1. Start at the beginning. I was told that Bertha Christine Molzen Deschner, born 1880, wrote the recipe on this page. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled a Kansas connection.
Life wasn’t always dreamy—but, for a family historian, even the less-than-perfect times may have had a silver lining.
It is easy to romanticize the lives of our ancestors. We like to think of them as hard-working, independent people.
Who: Lynne Cheney—author, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and wife of Vice President Dick Cheney
What: Blue Skies and No Fences: A Memoir of Childhood and Family
Why: “When I began writing my memoir of childhood in Wyoming, I realized how much both my husband and I owe to our forebears who made the journey west, often despite pretty awful circumstances.
“You’ve won a trip to Hawaii!”
For most people, a message like this would instantly conjure up images of warm beaches, white sand, sunshine, and tropical drinks.
And then there is me.
The Hawaii I want to see lies high above Honolulu, in the crater of a volcano where a 30-foot woman carved in stone stands sentinel.