Genealogical Musing with Fran

(Former StLGS president, Fran Behrman, is our guest blogger this week. As you gather with your family on Thanksgiving, remember that the holidays are a perfect time for encouraging stories to be told, recorded, written down, and preserved. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at StLGS!)

Hello from StLGS to all of our fellow genealogists,

What is a genealogist? Investigator, searcher, sleuth, explorer, authenticator, fact finder, scrutinizer, thinker, writer, historian. Just some of the adjectives that you might use to explain what you do in your quest for the facts of your family’s past. There are no shortcuts. No maybes. This is serious work that requires a studious, nosy, persistent, inquisitive, discerning mind. 

 Do you remember your first great discovery? What a thrill! It is the “hook” that makes you want more.

I have a maternal great-grandfather whose name is James Vaton Smith. Thank goodness for the Vaton part as that is how, after hours and hours of perusing through microfilm, I knew I had found my man. Way back before computers and the Internet, the average researcher had to go to the source of original records. It was not always possible or practical to travel to explore those records, so many of us ordered microfilm from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. We had a local Family History Center near my home, so when a microfilm would arrive, I would go there and research. My James Vaton Smith went through Arkansas to join the land rush to claim property in Oklahoma at the turn of the century (we know this because my grandmother was born in Arkansas). Not knowing more than his name and his destination, I started with the most northern counties of Arkansas and planned to search each and every county. I could have come up empty, as he may have never been in any one location long enough to be in a census or tax or land record, but it was my duty to try. Luckily, I did indeed find my James V. Smith in a marriage record in Stone County, Arkansas. That led to knowing my great-grandmother’s maiden name and her parents. What a find! And it was Smith! But he had used his middle name!

No, I didn’t make this discovery in a day or a week or even a month, but the satisfaction and joy of the discovery is still one I remember and smile about. Researching is what we do and the sweet joy of an accurate discovery is a glorious moment.

Do you remember your first discovery? Do you do your genealogy alone or do you have a partner or team that you work with? I have always had the joy of sharing with my sisters who have been as excited and sometimes as stunned as I by the facts we found.

Genealogy has grown in popularity as a hobby (some say it is now the most popular pastime in the U.S.) and it is easy to understand why. The discovery of an ancestor is a thrill. Once you find the name then adding “meat to bone,” so to speak, by researching the person in depth, brings great satisfaction.

Are all ancestors easy to find?  Of course not. But to me the thrill of the hunt is as great as the thrill of the find. How many places have I traveled to that I would probably never have had the joy of visiting if the hunt for ancestors was not my “thing”? Small towns, large cities, and in between, from north to south and east to west across the great oceans to unknown places, following the clues and the documents found in towns that I may have never heard of before.

Genealogy takes an inquisitive mind, which the Energizer bunny ad says “ just keeps on goin!” Do you think you are finished when you have collected all the facts about everyone in your family tree? Well, I don’t think so. After collecting, you must preserve what you’ve found and hopefully write the story of your family’s past. Now that can be an even harder task, but this doesn’t have to be the great American novel. No, this is the story based on documented facts, that you will leave to generations to come who will know the contribution your family made to our world.

I am a genealogist. I am an investigator. I am an authenticator! And I am proud to be a member of StLGS, which has dedicated fifty years to assisting those who want to know about their family’s history.

             Wishing you great success in your genealogical search. Fran