Saturday, June 30, 2018

Ancestors by Diane Burton



 As I wait for the edits to Numbers Never Lie, I’m catching up on a lot of things, along with relaxing . . . somewhat. Last week, something happened that sidetracked me from the financial stuff with my books. Darn.

My sister received an email from our grandmother’s sister’s granddaughter via Ancestry.com. Apparently, Ellen found my sister because she’d gotten her DNA done through Ancestry. I contacted Ellen and that spurred me to get back to working on my genealogy—something I’ve done sporadically for about forty years. Even less so since I’ve been writing.

I remembered Ellen’s mother (my dad’s cousin). I think she came to my wedding. Since that was back in the dark ages, though, I’m not positive. 😉

As I looked over my family tree, I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about my generation: their marriages, children, and grandchildren. My sister is the family connector. She calls cousins, visits our sole surviving uncle and our dad's cousin, generally keeps in touch. She never married and, perhaps, this is her way of maintaining a family.

Somewhere in my office (that needs organizing) is a box with wedding invitations, birth announcements, etc. I have all the info I need to fill in the info, just not at hand. One thing I was pleased about is Ancestry’s privacy policy. Living members are hidden from the public. Yay! Originally, I was afraid to add them for privacy reasons.

A couple of days ago, Betsy Ashton wrote about being keeper of the "box." That's me. I have letters from my grandfather to my grandmother when they were courting. I need to scan them so my brothers and sisters can read them. Same with old pictures. 

I’ve always thought it was important to know where I came from. Not for inheritance sake, like my grandmother and her cousins thought. Hubs joined Ancestry to organize all the “stuff” he’s collected and stories from his mother, dad, and aunt. He’s stuck on his grandfather. According to his aunt, the one time her sister asked about his family, Grandfather teared up and their mother forbade them to ask again. Too bad. That’s a mystery Hubs is still trying to solve.

In a post here several years ago, I mentioned my grandmother and her cousins hiring a genealogist to trace their family history. According to legend, their ancestor (Anneke Jans Borgardus) who was the daughter of the king of The Netherlands married against his will and was disinherited for seven generations. Gram’s cousins were certain they were the seventh generations and would inherit buckets of money. Since this was in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression in Detroit, it’s easy to understand their desire. And to throw money at the genealogist who told them (repeatedly) he was almost there. Unfortunately, the legend was just that. A legend.



Amazingly, much of what his report said can be backed up with documents, especially through the DAR. However, many assumptions the family had proved false. Hence, no inheritance. Darn.

While on this journey to find out where I came from, I talked to (or corresponded with) several relatives in my grandmother’s generation. It was great reading about our grandfather’s courtship of our grandmother through the eyes of her sister with whom she lived. With the exception of one of my dad’s brothers and one of his cousins, the people of that generation are no longer with us. Gone, too, are their stories.

It looks like I’m the family storyteller now.

What a scary thought. The responsibility of keeping the family stories alive is mine. Enter technology. While people gripe about how technology is taking over our lives, I’m applauding the ease with which things can be shared. Scan in pictures and letters then send electronically to someone in California. Easy peasy.

When we first joined Ancestry, I didn’t realize that I could share all that knowledge with my family, whether they are members of Ancestry or not. I recently discovered my youngest cousin (same age as my daughter) is on Ancestry. I happily shared what I know with him. It will be wonderful that our family history will live on. That is a big relief. The burden can be shared.

Now, it’s time to get back to the other chores awaiting me. And the next book.

BTW, here's the cover for my soon-to-be released romantic suspense.



Diane Burton combines her love of mystery, adventure, science fiction, and romance into writing romantic fiction. She blogs here on the 16th and 30th of each month. She shares snippets from her stories every weekend on her blog. Her newest romantic suspense, Numbers Never Lie, will be released next month.


15 comments:

Margo Hoornstra said...

Congratulations on getting another book completed, AND for now having more time to do some of the other important things of life. I’m fortunate to have an amazing grandson who’s fascinated with all things family. He’ll send me emails I open and, voila, there’s a picture of my great-great grandfather. He even found of video from World War II that showed my dad, the Air Force bombardier. As I said, amazing! Keepers of the box are priceless.

Vonnie Davis said...

Since Calvin's "Celebration of Life" is this afternoon and family is here in Southern VA from Rhode Island, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland--and Berlin--I'm very cognizant of family relationships right now. All the little acts of love we do for each other. Roots run deep. It's nice to know where yours began centuries ago. I'm sure you'll enjoy your journey into the past. Maybe you can unravel some of the mystery of the relative's past "not to be spoken of" or invent one of your own as a basis for a book. An enjoyable post to read and nod my head over.

Leah St. James said...

Adding my congrats, Diane! That's such a great feeling. (Love the cover, too!) TPM (hubby) is the genealogist in our family, at least for his family. He's traced both sides of his family back to the 1700s and found scanned images of documents where his grandfather and his brothers landed for immigration processing at the Castle Garden facility in Manhattan (prior to Ellis Island). From there he traced them back to Wales and Ireland. My family is much harder to trace. My mother was adopted, and my father was absent, so I know next to nothing about him. Sometimes I'm tempted to dig. You're right that technology does make things so much easier today! Maybe some day I'll get the urge and have a break at the same time.:-)

Rolynn Anderson said...

The importance of writing stories and archiving them...about family, turns out to be extremely important. Many of us who write novels don't take the time to write about our lives for the benefit of those to come. My sister is writing a new family story and sending it to each of her grandchildren at every birthday. As Diane says its not just the names, connections to nobility, family health issues and/or heritage we're trying to discover, it's how people lived their lives. I don't save the updates I send to my family, which I try to write creatively. I should have done that...not too late to start...or to tell a grandchild to do it :-)

Alison Henderson said...

I'm fascinated by genealogy, too. In the pre-internet days, one of my aunts did extensive research on my father's side of the family and wrote an actual book (which has my name in it!) Several decades ago, Hallmark put out a lovely fill-in-yourself book called Grandmother remembers. My grandmother made one for us, filling in all the sections about her life growing up and about my mother's girlhood, complete with wonderful old photos. OG had always been confused about his own roots, since family members refused to talk about it, so I did an Ancestry.com search for him and was able to straighten out some of the old mysteries. BTW - Congrats on your upcoming release!!!

Jannine Gallant said...

I wrote down a lot of my grandma's stories from her youth quite a few years before she died. I'm so glad I did. I've also done research back to the 17th century when most of my ancestors showed up in America. It's always fascinating to discover you have a relative who was accused of witchcraft or who played a role in the Revolutionary War. Fun stuff. Congrats on the book!

Alicia Dean said...

Fascinating! I've always wanted to trace my ancestry. Wow, some interesting history in your DNA. (You'll have your edits back today...sorry I didn't get them to you yesterday :)) It's a great read!

Diane Burton said...

Margo, it is so wonderful that your grandson is interested in family history. It is exciting to find a picture (or video) of a relative who lived long ago. Right now, I have those type of pictures plus old documents. I need to share them with my family.

Diane Burton said...

Vonnie, I thought of you on Saturday. Celebrations of life are so meaningful, and the gathering of family important for all. Even though I've never written an historical novel, it would be fun to take what I know about one of my ancestors and write that story. Thanks for mentioning that.

Diane Burton said...

Leah, my Hubs got me interested. That and finding a proclamation signed by President James Buchanan. I had no idea who that person was. Neither did Mom. the day I made the connection I did a happy dance. LOL When you have the urge, I hope you're able to find out about your roots.

Diane Burton said...

Rolynn, you are so right. I need to share more with my sibs along with my children and grandchildren. Since the grands are so young, I try to refer to their great-grandparents by their first names (e.g., Grandma Dorothy, Grandpa Don, etc.) It's a start.

Diane Burton said...

Thanks, Alison. My daughter and daughter-in-law gave me those books to fill out. I'm embarrassed to say, they're still empty. Yikes! What fun to see your name in your aunt's book. Sharing family info is important for the young ones to know where they came from--and not have to reinvent the wheel.

Diane Burton said...

Jannine, you were so smart to write down your grandmother's stories. I wish now I'd done that with both my grandmothers. What treasures you can pass on to your children. Thanks for the good wishes.

Diane Burton said...

Ally, you are so funny. I'm glad you enjoyed the story. Looks like my genealogy time is over. LOL Thanks so much.

Diane Burton said...

Thanks, everyone, for your good wishes on my new book. I'm excited.