It seems appropriate to start the new year talking about my mother and her genealogical research. She is the person who served as my foundation for my love of genealogy. And “Foundations” was the first prompt for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks for 2022. Mom’s first notes occurred in 1943. She was living in Memphis at the time, as my father was still involved as a lieutenant in the Navy and was stationed at the base in Memphis. They had been married in 1941 in Washington DC on December 5th, 2 days before Pearl Harbor. After being stationed initially in Hollywood Beach Florida, dad was transferred to Memphis. But their love story is for another time, but this picture taken in Memphis in 1945 says it all! Mom’s first genealogy notes reference the work she was doing on the Fox line. She was researching the relationship of her grandparents Walter Abraham Fox and Eva Leona Fox. She wanted to determine if they were cousins. They were cousins, actually second cousins once removed. But this determination didn’t stop my mother from continuing to research her ancestors, and eventually my father’s ancestors. She continued working on genealogy until the early 2000’s. She left me 40 boxes and 4 filing cabinets filled with her genealogy research, upon her death in 2006.
Today in my personal library there are over 500 letters my mother wrote. Most have the result attached from her request. Now they are ordered now into notebooks by surname. She wrote to courthouses, family members, genealogical societies, museums, and libraries. Remember she did most of her research before computers, but made the transition to computers for typing notes and pedigree charts in the mid-80’s. She took me on numerous genealogy research outings. As a child I was the person running through the cemetery looking for a specific name on a tombstone. Or I was the person helping to roll and unroll the microfilm on a machine in a library while she was searching for a specific document. She took me to courthouses, the National Archives, the DAR library, the Library of Congress and the Family History Library all before I went off to college. She encouraged me to research my husband’s ancestors when his family admitted that they had little information on their ancestors. She taught me about census records, church records, tax records and land records and how to glean information from each one, before looking for a new one. Most importantly, she taught me that genealogy is not just about birth, marriage, and death records. Instead it is about the social and historical context that surrounds the life of an individual. This key foundation has meant researching for the deeper context of the lives of my ancestors. Each find deepens my understanding of their experience during the time period in which they lived. Every time my research ends in a path of frustration, I simply ask myself “What would my mother have done?” “Where would she have gone to research?” “Who else should I be contacting?” The right questions and foundation for any genealogist, but questions carrying meaning and memories of my mother.
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January 2022
About this BlogThis blog has been designed to serve two purposes. The first is to leave the written histories of my ancestors.
The second purpose is to offer some of my own stories, so that my children and grandchildren can learn more about my direct family and my childhood. Categories |