I began my journey into family history in the mid 1980s before records were online. I spent many hours at our local genealogy library (Midwest Genealogy Center it’s called now), trolling through microfilm rolls and rolls of census records, sometimes reading a whole county to find my people.
The first record I remember finding was in 1920 when my grandmother was 16. It was so exciting to see her name with her family as a teenager. I can only imagine what her life was like in 1920, skating on local park pond in the winter, going to the nickel picture show, making friends at school and church, hanging laundry outside in the winter and bringing it in to dry over the stove. Seeing her name on the census prompted many thoughts and feelings for me.
The next census record that intrigued me was 1930, and my father was 3 years old living in Los Angeles, California. Again it was so fascinating to see his name, along with his younger sister and my grandparents all together in one house.
The 1940 census the family was back in Kansas City and my father was 13. Thinking of him as a teenager I realized that’s when he began learning how to play the drums. It was an interest he had until well into his adult years, but started in his teens. In the 1940 census I also found my great grandmother, who I knew until she died when I was 12. She actually started my interest in the family history and I was always asking her questions about our family. Some questions she would answer, others she refused…..family secrets that would take me years to unwind.
One vacation my husband and I were in eastern Tennessee looking through records at the Grainger County courthouse and found my 3rd great grandfather’s marriage record sitting in a shoebox on the floor. I was so excited as I had searched for his records for quite a while, but also dismayed that the records were so loosely slung about in the safe at the courthouse.
Another vacation took us into northern Oklahoma looking for a gravesite deep in the woods, searching for my maternal great grandmother. The stone was small and had been there in 2015 but when we were there in 2018 it was gone. We searched the whole cemetery on foot, in the rain, and it was gone. I was very disappointed that someone may have took the stone as it was small and probably easy to lift and carry away. Perhaps we will place another stone sometime in the future.
My husband’s family is from western North Carolina for 7 generations at least. His 2nd great grandfather is a scoundrel according to my sister in law. He was married, had several children, then deserted his family. We have found records of his service in the Civil War on the confederacy side. He married a second time to a woman who had an inheritance, but when she died she was in the county poor house.
We can only assume what the real story is, and I have never found a death record on this man. But I did just recently find a divorce record from his first wife in the North Carolina State Archives. I was so surprised to find the record after many years. In the record it shows he had been committing adultery with at least 2 women and deserted his wife and children. His wife was able to get the divorce, but she had to pay for the court costs because he didn’t show up in court.
Perhaps one of the most interesting, unusual record I found was also in North Carolina, Rutherford County of my husband’s 4th great grandfather and his will. In the will, he was going to leave some money to his granddaughter who was married to the above mentioned scoundrel. But the grandfather left a long codicil to the will that he was not going to give her any money because the scoundrel owed him $40 (which in 1871 was a lot of money) and until that money was paid back, his granddaughter received nothing. Seemed very unfair to me as she could not control her scoundrel of a husband, but that’s the way it was left.
The first real record I found was in 1983 and it was my 2nd great grandparents marriage license. James Brady and Bridget Daly married in 1855 in Hannibal Missouri. It was so exciting to see their signatures and to know when and where they got married. This record compelled me to keep searching for any other records I could find. I think of James and Bridget frequently and thank them for pushing me on this family history journey.
See our previous post on genealogy records.
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