Think you can learn just how your ancestor celebrated a holiday—175 years ago? You may be on to something.
There I was, by the dawn’s early light, poking about the Internet looking for another patriot ancestor, or, rather, seeking information to prove I had the right Jacob.
My family tree is laden with precious stones, flowers, and famous names. There are Pearls and Rubies, Lilies, Roses, Irises, Daisies, and a lot of Violets. On other branches, dangle George Washingtons and Daniel Boones, Benjamin Franklins, Napoleon Bonapartes, Marquis Lafayettes, Abraham Lincolns, Robert E. Lees, Andrew Jacksons, Zachary Taylors, William Henry Harrisons, and a fictional hero, too.
James R. Vanderpool, my ancestor, was just a blacksmith in the Ozark Mountains of Newton County, Arkansas, when the Civil War erupted. He became a Mountain Federal—a group of men who chose to serve on the Union side. Loyalties, however, were greatly divided in Newton County: popular men, including his neighbor John Cecil, who had served two terms as sheriff, joined the Confederate army.
My family tree seems to have more than its share of naughty daughters. Maybes it’s a head-strong, stubborn, or a willful gene that runs rampant in our DNA.
For me, family history has always been more than names, dates, and places, so trying to figure out what it was that naughty daughters did or didn’t do that caused them to be written out of wills is right up my alley.
Each year Black History Month reminds all of us of how many ethnic resources are available to assist us in our genealogical pursuits, regardless of our ancestral origins.
“Grandma, what am I?” I used to ask while bouncing about her culinary kingdom, the farmhouse kitchen, while Grandma multi-tasked, keeping the woodstove going and tossing a pinch of this and a dash of that into a big bowl.
Not who but what. I wanted to know our ethnicity.
“You’re a mess,” Grandma would say, her hazel-green eyes twinkling.
Traipsing through cemeteries to see the tombstone of an ancestor has been written about so frequently that the activity has to be a significant endeavor. But why? A walk through an ancestral cemetery—or even lunch or dinner in a cemetery—can enhance your family history research by providing context.
Put on your hip waders and dig up some worms. It’s time to find ancestors.
July was always my favorite month when I was growing up. It was the month when my grandfather and I escaped the scorching heat by going fishing. We’d get the cane poles out, dig up some worms, fill a fruit jar with cold water, pack a lunch, and take off.
How many times have you been delighted at the discovery of a trunk full of family heirlooms? How many times has a cousin presented you with a bundle of letters or a previously unknown photo album found in an attic full of old things?
Dig up almost any tree in America and odds are good that you’ll find at least one German root.
Scratch an American pedigree and you probably will find some German branches. That’s because it is estimated that more than one-half of us have at least some ancestors of Germanic origins.
