Last week I signed up for a two-week trial on ancestry.com. It is fascinating.
I have always been into genealogy, so when they were living, I peppered my grandparents with questions: how many siblings did they have, what were there names, their birthdays, where were they born?
I have several pages of notes listing all MeMe’s siblings and PaPa’s siblings and where/when they were born. I knew their parents’ names and even their grandparents’ names. (I even have framed photos of my MeMe’s maternal grandparents — Isaac & Mary Ellen Dodds. Isaac was a Union soldier and came from a Quaker family. Odd combo.) I knew where they all lived (a handful of counties in central Ohio and Western Kentucky — though I did find the odd maternal relative who came from Virginia or West Virginia.)
So filling out my tree was pretty easy. What made it even easier is that you have to go back pretty far on any of my branches to find someone born overseas. (I’ve only gotten back far enough on my paternal line to get to the first immigrant — a man named Nathaniel who came to Ipswich, Mass., with his brother John in 1633.) So, there are more available records on my lineage.
The other thing that helped (a lot) is that my paternal grandfather typed up the lineage of my maiden name before he passed away in the late 1980s. (Except he didn’t travel down any of the maternal lines — that information has been fun to find. Lots of Hannahs and Joannas!)
Aaron’s tree, however, has been a bit more challenging. “When was your grandpa’s birthday?” “I don’t know.” “Do you know if your grandpa’s grandparents lived in Wisconsin?” “I don’t know.” We know for sure that his paternal grandmother’s mother was born in Sweden (and found a record to corroborate that), but he doesn’t know her maiden name. So her parents? No idea.
But I’m going to dig and find it, because I love a challenge. (Almost as much as I love family.)
Prices — 1940s maybe?
Butch & Dot — Aaron’s resemblance to his grandfather is just incredible to me. (Though Aaron has been quick to remind me that Butch was much shorter. Ha.)
My family is way into it – on my mother’s side. We are on ancestry.com too and she even has our family “history” published. We have our own book! Grandma has us back to the revolutionary war, I’ve even visited the graves of my rev. war ancestors in Otis, Mass. It is so cool to touch that part of history.
How cool! If we ever get to Ipswich, we’ll have to go look for their markers!
Oh this is cool! I definitely see the resemblance of Aaron to Butch! I need to start asking more questions. B/c right now, my answers are a lot like Aaron’s!
Ha! He’s having dinner with his maternal grandmother tomorrow and I’m sending him with a list of questions!