Contact
Subscribe
Apr 2008 Issue
By LaRae Kerr
Why is genealogy so important to you?” asked reader D.A. “What is this drive to dig up info on your ancestors? You refer to this information as ‘useful.’ Useful for what? Perhaps…you could give particulars.”
D.A.’s questions have led me a merry chase mentally, and I am going to attempt an answer. This is my personal answer to D.A.’s questions. What I say will not necessarily be true for other genealogists. And I probably cannot transfer to you, certainly not in just one column, how deeply I feel about each of these reasons. Let my life stand for the depth of my commitment to genealogy and family history.
Genealogical research has to one degree or another saved my life. I acquired a chronic illness when I was only 32 and was told I might live ten years – just long enough to get my baby to the age of 11 or 12 and my girls into their teens. But my fascination with the puzzles presented by genealogy pulled my body along for another 30 years.
Perhaps because I have been so sick and so close to the other side, I know there is a life after death where people associate with those they knew and loved in life. Hence I know that those who lived before can benefit from services we children can perform for them here in the world.
Further, though I am intrigued with the use of DNA in genealogy and enjoy keeping an eye out on sociology, anthropology and all human related sciences, I am still convinced human beings are children of God – all of them children of the same God. And I can satisfactorily respond to most scientists’ questions about this.
Therefore, the reasons I sit in front of my computer in my pj’s finding one more ancestor or searching for another document to prove a hypothesis are: 1. I feel great love and connection to the ancestors I have known and loved as well as those who “have gone before.” 2. I just love the game, the puzzle, the search, the identifying and setting up the research problem and digging up the solution. I love, love, love the research! 3. I am convinced genealogy makes the world “greener,” more “user friendly,” more gentle. A very abbreviated story illustrating each of the three reasons follows.
My sister and I were four and five years old when our mother took us to the Caliente, Nevada hospital to meet our 2nd great grandmother, Malissa Keziah Rollins Lee Heybourne. There was so much love in that room when the frail hand reached out to touch me, that I have never forgotten the connection. Malissa, I found out later, was born in 1851 under a sycamore tree at Cajon Pass near San Bernardino, California. I’ve stood where she was born. But even that isn’t the big deal. It’s the loving connection between an ox drawn wagon, a nine-months pregnant 3rd great grandmother who stopped the wagon long enough for Malissa to be born.
It’s like all the adventures of my past relatives are also swirling about my own life, bringing love and connection, and yes, intrigue.
It is this second reason, the love of the game, that kept me alive to raise and love my children and meet my grandchildren. Determining the one piece of information I needed, locating the archive and then finding the document – oh my, it’s better than winning a basketball game or raising a prize rose or writing a best seller. Here’s a shortest example: after years of not being able to find Mildred Free Beasley’s children (before internet databases), I finally asked the clerk in Illinois to look for Beasley children, instead of the mother and father, in the 1850 census. And there was Millie, married to another man whose name I would not have known another way, in the same household with a bunch of Beasley children.
This third reason may answer DA’s question about the usefulness of genealogy. It’s my soap box, but I’ll be very brief here. I believe that if we all knew how closely related we really are, we would behave differently to each other, more kindly. I suspect that if the fathers’ hearts were turned to the children there would be less abuse, less selfishness, more care given to family as well as others. If children’s hearts were turned to their fathers, perhaps we would be less likely to keep making the same mistakes they did.
An example: While doing the research on my Wadsworth family, I discovered three of my great, great uncles were alcoholics. Poor nutrition, pioneer family, hiding out from Pinkerton detectives, pancreas problems throughout family – whatever the underlying reasons, they were alcoholics. Knowing that and knowing I had similar health problems prompted me to decide I wouldn’t drink alcohol. And I haven’t.
Connecting with and to our ancestors can save us in many ways; it joins us hip to hip with the history of the world; it can, if we let it, make us better people. All that while we’re having the times of our lives!
LaRae Free Kerr, M ED, can be reached at Itsallrelatives@sfcn.org and at Itsallrelatives.net.
