Susil

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News From Mississippi

Life & Events > Well Who Knew !
 

Well Who Knew !

My friend Dottie is a dedicated genealogist who suscribes to Ancestry.com and some other sites and has traced her ancestry back to the 1700's. Last night I phoned her while she was looking up info on one of those sites. I mentioned the photos of great great grandparents "Kitty and Samuel", and said I wished I knew something about them.

Dottie pulls them up on her computer and according to census records from the time, Kitty was not her real name--it was a nickname. Great great granny's real name was Eulala. I had never heard that name mentioned before. Then I asked about a great great aunt "Patience," whom no one seemed to know anything about. These computer searches pull the dead back to life with cold hard facts from census records, and other info other genealogist have found and added to the site.

Turns out great great aunt Patience had had a child out of wedlock and given the child to her mother to raise as hers so the infant wouldn't be called a bastard. Her mother was past childbearing age, but that baby boy was hers and nobody ever said any different. Patience died young--there are no photos of her extant.

Then Dottie pulled up a relative I remember seeing when I was a child, "Aunt Fanny." Fanny had a child out of wedlock and told everyone its father was a traveling salesman, with a last name I had never heard of. But she raised the child bearing her maiden name. Dottie says "Teenagers today think they invented sex, but there's always been a lot of 'undercover' activity going on. People back then just tried to hide it, deny it and squelch it."

I remember when I was a home health nurse, and an elderly patient of mine was delusional with dementia. She kept pleading for someone to get the baby out of the lake. Someone close to the family told me she had had a baby when she was a teenager, and her father had drowned the infant in a lake. He was an important man and didn't want the scandal. She never had another child. I felt such pity for her. Up until this latest generation, an unmarried woman having a baby was the blackest sin of all. (Kind of like Hester Prynne forced to wear the letter "A" in the Scarlet Letter.)

Who said "There's nothing new under the sun," and it's true. The same human hurts and rashness and pain have always been the same, and the genealogist searches fleshes out the people who were only names and numbers. Who would have known.

susil

posted on Oct 10, 2010 9:03 AM ()

Comments:

It is probably the same as when three people witness an accident and all
tell a different story. No one person ever quite sees a thing the same
way. I have found that it is extremely rewarding when you can connect
with a lost branch of your family as I did with my third cousin, Virginia.
We immediately felt like family. We were both teachers with common interests.
comment by elderjane on Oct 12, 2010 5:12 AM ()
Jeri you're right--events in my childhood are remembered differently by each of my sibs, so different slants on events happen.
Isn't genetics great? Some traits can skip a generation or so and show up again in a distant relative. Cool!
reply by susil on Oct 16, 2010 11:09 PM ()
Jay, in addition to his Indian heritage, was an Anglo mix -- Scotch/Irish/Saxon ... yes dark hair, gray eyes. The kind of fellow one might call "black Irish". I'll try to post a photo. Have been having trouble lately and need to get some advice from techie friend.
comment by tealstar on Oct 11, 2010 12:12 PM ()
Hi teal, I'll be watching for that photo--hope you can get one on. I gave up on trying to post photos long time ago, between sorry setup on mybloggers and my ancient computer. Good luck.
reply by susil on Oct 16, 2010 10:57 PM ()
I have used genealogy websites but mostly, I have gone to the local record offices to research in. I found that while reading up on 'someone or other' who had absaloutly nothing to do with the person(s) being researched, I found myelf being 'drawn in' to their lives (wasting a lot of time and money - but interesting )
comment by febreze on Oct 10, 2010 4:17 PM ()
Hi breze; One time I was in a dusty little resale shop and found a bundle of letters tied in a blue ribbon in the drawer of a china cabinet. I couldn't bear the thought somebody would throw them away, so I bought those letters. They were from a boy in the Army in WWII to his mother. The letters were so well written and articulate, (with certain parts blacked out by censors.) After phoning and writing, found out the boy had died in the war, his mother died, and all her stuff sold. I'm a sap--I cried on those letters.
reply by susil on Oct 11, 2010 8:17 AM ()
So sad that my ancestors came from a time and rural Greek conditions where records where poorly kept. My mother did not know her birth date, but would answer, when asked, that she was born "the year before my brothers came home from the war." (Greece-Turkey). Ain't that a kick? Jay's genealogy, however could probably be traced -- it dates back to Indian times; as I've mentioned, he was part Iroquois (and very happy about it).
comment by tealstar on Oct 10, 2010 2:05 PM ()
Wow! Things must have been really bad for there to be no record of births-that is something!
PS When you mention Jay I always picture him as being tall and dark haired and handsome with blue eyes. Don't know why, that's the image that comes to mind..
reply by susil on Oct 11, 2010 8:21 AM ()
My mom is a war bride from England. She has lost a lot of her accent but not all of it. My sisters and I, being born and raised in Canada, have no English accent, however, I do love and enjoy using British terminology.
comment by nittineedles on Oct 10, 2010 1:15 PM ()
nittin; I don't know why that surprises me, that in only one, maybe two generations, the native accent can be lost. Love those British colloquialism's!
reply by susil on Oct 11, 2010 7:51 AM ()
My Great Great Great Grandmother gave birth to her son in a "Poor House" in England. I feel sorry for her but that little tidbit of information is so cool!
comment by nittineedles on Oct 10, 2010 1:11 PM ()
nittin; that pained my heart--she must have felt so desperate and alone--but she was obviously a strong woman--she survived to produce descendants like youself! But what cool info indeed!
reply by susil on Oct 11, 2010 7:46 AM ()
Ancestry.com is a good resource for people who can afford their rates. When I had access to it, I found the ship manifests that listed my various ancestors as they came to this country, and census lists that showed the families when my grandparents were just wee tots. It cleared up several questions that had come up as to whether someone was born in England or the United States. Many times the stories my grandmother had told me about it didn't match what the documentation shows.
comment by troutbend on Oct 10, 2010 9:08 AM ()
BTW, I asked Dottie this: How long did it take-how many generations-- for the ancestors who came over from England to lose their English accents?
And what is the origin for the southern accent? I'd sure like to ask a linguist.
reply by susil on Oct 10, 2010 10:06 AM ()
That's what I found so interesting and puzzling as Dottie researched the records--our oral family history didn't match the documentation a lot of the time. I think family fits the facts "to fit" or skews the facts, maybe not on purpose, but it happens.
It is interesting to find out things about your ancestors, isn't it?
reply by susil on Oct 10, 2010 10:03 AM ()

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