- Living to Tell the Tale
Dead men tell no tales, but when those left behind do—a fellow family historian reminds us—their stories often reveal more than any records. This week I read a very moving piece by a fellow family history researcher. I have enjoyed many of Paul Chiddicks’ posts on Substack. He is also a columnist for Family Tree Magazine. In a recent piece, The Trees Remember, Paul has perfectly underscored the fact that, in terms of having a better understanding of history— whether about one’s family or in a more general context—records are merely a starting point. They have limitations. Paul’s piece provides… Continue reading Living to Tell the Tale - I Read the News Today. Oh Boy!
Newspaper clippings can reveal a lot about an ancestor. Maybe too much. In the years I’ve been researching family history, I have found that my subscription to Newspapers.com has been a valuable resource, primarily in locating obituaries of ancestors. Obituaries can be extremely helpful in finding out detailed information about the decedent, of course. But because obituaries often list family members who predeceased the decedent as well as survivors, obituaries can provide information on parents, siblings, and descendants as well. Apart from my subscription providing useful factual information, I’ve also discovered that what constituted “news”—especially from the late nineteenth century… Continue reading I Read the News Today. Oh Boy! - The Specter of My 5th Great-Grandfather
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 as a total surprise. That was only the first of many intriguing things that I learned in researching Michael Garoutte. He left France at a young age, coming to fight for the patriot cause in the American Revolution. He called fellow French nobleman Lafayette a… Continue reading The Specter of My 5th Great-Grandfather - Walking a Mile in My Ancestors’ Combat Boots
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 somewhat and instead addressing how expanding my ancestral tree–along with a trip to a historical site–changed how I view world events in general but, specifically, the casualties of war. During the American Revolution, my 5th great-grandfather Michael Antoine Garoutte (1750-1829), above, fought for the Colonies… Continue reading Walking a Mile in My Ancestors’ Combat Boots - Picher: “America’s Most Toxic Town”
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 there for many years. But after my grandfather retired, he and my grandmother moved back to Joplin, a place I associate with more recent memories of them. My father was not born in Joplin, however. He was born in Picher, Oklahoma, in 1937. My grandparents… Continue reading Picher: “America’s Most Toxic Town”
