What if one could actually speak with a dead ancestor? I remember first “discovering” my 5th great-grandfather Michael Antoine Garoutte (1750-1829). I had known for some time that my ethnic background was almost exclusively Scots-Irish, with the exception of a maternal line traced to Germany. Discovering this direct link to France, through Michael Garoutte, came… Continue reading The Specter of My 5th Great-Grandfather
Genealogy and a family trip have made the sacrifices of members of the military and their families more real for me. I was tasked from the prompt at the end of this essay to write about how finding out something about an ancestor had changed how I view that ancestor. I’m deviating from the script… Continue reading Walking a Mile in My Ancestors’ Combat Boots
When your birthplace is designated a superfund site, you truly can’t go home again. If you ask my father where he comes from, he would say Joplin, Missouri. He lived there from a relatively young age, graduating from Joplin High School. Sometime after he graduated, my grandparents moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I remember visiting them… Continue reading Picher: “America’s Most Toxic Town”
