I’m still doing irregular Genealogy research, and though I have back to the 1500’s on my mothers side, I’m still not as far as I’d like on my fathers side. I know nothing of his father, though an Aunt swears she has some information that I’m frothing at the mouth to get. And his mothers side I’ve got to his great grandparents that came over from Germany in 1882, along with the ship name, departure/arrival date, etc.

I had a sliver of hope when I found my great great grandfathers tombstone that I would be able to find his hometown in Germany on his death certificate. But do they list his hometown? Of course not. They just list “Germany.”

So the only way to get any further back is to actually do research -in- Germany. Meet my brick wall.

My father and I went out yesterday to the old stone church and graveyard where our family members all go to be buried. I wanted to take pictures of all the tombstones, and look to see if my gggrandfather who came over from Germany was buried there. I was told the Church (a place my family has been involved in for ages) had documents relating to his death there. Eventually I plan to go and get copies of those, and see if they indicate what city in Germany he was born in. (To note, my father says the lines of Poland and Germany have since changed, which I will have to research).

Anyway, I found numerous tombstones. Several tombstone were so old that the lettering was worn off, or they were unmarked completely. We started on one corner of the graveyard and weaved our way in and out trying to decipher names (they all seemed group together by name which was helpful), but I couldn’t find any sign of my gggrandfather.

When we came around, I noticed this rather huge tombstone about 3 tombstone away from where we started. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was in fact my gggrandfathers tombstone, with his year of birth and death, and his wife buried next to him under a rather small tombstone.

And next to them was one of my grandmothers infant sisters (she was one of 15) that died during their infancy.

I don’t know why it was so exciting for me. I was so relieved and happy to find the tombstone, and I wonder why I never looked at it before considering how many times I’ve been to that graveyard. It was just right down the road from our old farm near the Reservoir. I almost had the feeling of being reconnected with my ancestors as I stood there looking at his name engraved in stone. So much that I almost teared up, and it was like I was being reunited with them. It was all very satisfying.

I took pictures and intend to start on a blog of my ancestry from both parents. And I certainly intend to go visit and honor my ancestors memories more often now that I know where their markings are.

Given the recent spurt of genealogy information I gathered, I decided to email my mother and let her know some of the information I found, in hopes it would show her in good faith that I’m willing to share this information with her. In return, I hoped she would finally let go of some of the information she gathered and share it with me like she promised. I’ve always been under the impression she’s hoarding this information and holding it over my head like a weapon.

These are the replies I get:

Who is this person? I need to contact them. Give me their contact information so I can compare notes, but can’t do it for another week or so.

I do have the names of XXX parents. I just have to look it up. Right now I can’t because I’m in the middle of mid-term exams at college and don’t have time to look for it.

She was originally Cherokee Indian, so her parents would have Cherokee names, not American names. I will have to look at what my cousin sent me. Don’t have time right now.

I dunno, seemed more like a demand to me. And I’m certainly not going to just give away contact information of someone. That’s private. Regardless, I’ve warned my cousin about it, and apologized that I may not have information to share with her because of my greedy mother. My cousin and I both agree that sharing genealogy information is a -good- thing, and don’t understand why people hold onto it like buried treasure.

Whatever. I found information without you mother. If I have to live with just the information that was provided to me from other sources, so be it. You will not use this silly bullcrap against me.

[Edit]: I wrote a reply:

This person gave me all the information I needed, nevermind.

They are checking on the tribe again to be sure.

Good luck with your exams.

To which she replied fast with:

You didn’t tell me who this person is. What information did they give you? I need it for my research.

Yeah. Right.

When I didn’t reply fast enough, I received another:

Hey, are you going to give me the information or not?

To which I finally decided to reply:

Mom,

I have been trying to get some information on my family from not only you but other people in the family and NO ONE seems to want to give it up. Do you know how disheartening this is for my generation? That our ancestors make it so hard for us to find out where we came from?

This relative that I found went through the same thing. People hoarding information and not wanting to share it, they don’t understand it and neither do I. As you and I spoke of before, I will be creating a website with this information to share with all of the people in my bloodline. I will probably be setting up the foundation of the website before the end of the month even.

I’m not giving you their contact information. If they want to contact you, I will let them know. In the mean time you can relay messages through me, or you can stop being so opaque about the whole thing and making demands like you just did.

I just want to know about my family. It is information I want for my kids if I have them, and part of the learning process of figuring out who I am. I understand you are busy, everyone is. I also understand you have mid-terms. But I have been patiently waiting for this information for about a year, and you wouldn’t even give me your grandparents names. I had to find that out elsewhere. I highly doubt this was information you had to look up.

I’m not trying to shake the boat. You and I both know very well that we lead very different lives and that this will most likely never change. Don’t try and make this out to be an attack on you, because it isn’t. See it for what it is.

Her only reply to that was:

Good luck in your research.

Which, knowing my mother, means she’s not sharing squat. And probably never intended to.

Thanks mom.

I’ve stumbled across a wealth of information about a branch of my family, my maternal grandmothers side. For some reason, I decided to try an alternate spelling on the name I was given for my Indian Great Great grandmother, and happened across an inquiry on Rootsweb that a cousin of mine in Georgia made. I decided to email her to see if the name she posted about and mine were related, and low and behold she shows me a website she put up with ancestors back to the year 1595, including pictures. One picture in particular of our Indian Grandmother whom she does not know the name of.

The name I was given as our Indian Grandmother was on her site, but I’m not sure if the women in the picture was Indian or if it was another picture on the site that my cousin calls our Indian Grandmother. So my mothers information and her information might be conflicting. But until my mother gives me all of the research she’s done, I won’t know for sure.

Despite this, however, I now have information more than Thirteen generations back, AND a picture of my Indian Grandmother. In the picture, you see a beautiful necklace that my cousin (whom is 56) recalls playing with as a little girl. She used to be told stories about our Indian Grandmother, but that much information was kept secret because having Indian blood was a “shame” back in the late 1800’s or so.

I am excited to be corresponding with her though, and I’ve sent her some pictures as well. She says that she believes a relative still has the necklace, but that the relative she thinks has it, lives in Hawaii, and was on Jimmy Carter’s staff when he was president. If I can get the contact information, you better believe I’ll be calling Hawaii to see if I can find her and this necklace. What a treasure it would be to find the necklace in the picture of my Indian Grandmother from the 1800’s.

I just got back from visiting a relative that had information all the way back to my great great grandfather of my paternal grandmothers family, who came over on a ship from Germany in the 1800’s (she had a total of 306 relatives in the database). So that is a GREAT start for me, but I still hope to find lineage from my paternal Grandfather as well as the information my mother has collected on her side of the family.

The relative (who I assume is a second or third cousin of mine) also lent me her “Family Tree Maker” program which I will install and also make disk copies and digital copies of to share. She also gave me the export of all the information she’s collected, as well as a disk of pictures that she’s collected. She still has much more to scan, some of which are passenger lists for ships and immigration services and death certificates.

So a good productive gather of information. Hopefully I can utilize these resources to get even more.

My knee hasn’t been doing so well lately, which I think is attributed to the stairs at the new work building. I notice I am more in pain at the end of the work week than the beginning, because in the beginning I’ve had the weekend to rest it.

I’ve ordered an additional joint supplement, and am doing some low-impact exercises for the knee and quadriceps area and will see how that works out for a couple months. Otherwise I might have to look into surgical options.

I’ve really wanted to get started researching my Genealogy, with really no direction on how. I figure if I keep track of what I do on my journal, maybe it will help others interested in the same thing.

I had originally started filling out information on a new Web 2.0 flash website that came out (though the name escapes me now). But after thinking about it, I really didn’t want to publish my family history with a 3rd party service on the internet. I didn’t think it was very secure, and at the time it offered no export option so I could backup the information.

I recently ran across a free program from MyHeritage called The Family Tree Builder which I started using last night. It was slightly confusing at first, but I’ve gotten the hang of how to use it now, and have inputed over 50 people so far. I also save often because it did crash on me once, and I export a backup copy after any significant changes.

Then I started using Google on some names, and was actually able to find someone who has also done some research on my Maternal Grandmothers family, so I was able to get the names of my Great Grandparents on that side (I’ve always thought it weird that our Great Grandparents play such an insignificant roll in our lives).

There are a lot of sites that I ran across, such as ancestry.com and genealogy.org that are pay sites, that I just don’t feel like paying for right now. But genealogy.COM is free, and actually links you to various sites, including the Social Security number index. I actually found the social security number to my Great Grandfather who I never knew about until recently who gave up my grandfather for adoption when he was born. And he only recently died in 1991.

Familysearch.org is also a great resource (though you have to sign up for it) because it’s run by Latter Day Saints. Those of you unfamiliar with Mormons, they have the best ancestry database out there most likely, as genealogy is very important to Mormons. So if you know a Mormon, you might have some extra access to this kind of information. My cousin (and one of my best friends) is Mormon, along with her whole immediate family. So if I can talk her mother into giving me the information our that side of my family that she’s collected, I’ll be in fairly good shape.

My paternal grandparents, especially the grandmother, was one of 15 children, and her side of the family is ridiculously huge. I was able to contact two relatives whom I don’t think I’ve ever met and recently sent them emails to see if they have any information or know of anyone in the family that has also done this research.

My two next biggest steps are to talk with family members, even ones I haven’t seen since I was a kid, and to also find out what sort of local official buildings keep records on people and what I have to do to get some of that information.