Wisteria

An old Christmas card found tucked in the photograph album of Ivy Watts Diuguid I write this in that in-between time, after Christmas and before New Years. If there are any ghosts of Christmas past, they will come to me, having been a family historian for thirty years. And they do seem to come, as I sit here in the gloom of winter, eating bean and ham soup. The meal in and of itself brings to mind a memory: I am all of 9 or 10, maybe. We had recently moved from Key West where my father was stationed while still in the Navy, up to where my maternal grandparents had chosen to retire in a small community called Talisman Estates outside of Dade City just north of Lacoochee. (Our mailing address was Dade City though it was some distance away; I settled in the third grade at Lacoochee Elementary.) For reasons unknown to me then or now, my older half-brother on my father's side came to live with us just after my parents had purchased a lot near my grandfather's and bought a lar...

Ruby and Amy Hardy daughters of William L. and Alice S. (Lovelace) Hardy Elsewhere I have chronicled the story of how I started my lifelong journey into researching family history after the death of my grandmother Amy in 1989. At the funeral, I watched my great-aunt Ruby weep for her sister and realized that she and my grandmother were both once little girls. Ruby (born in 1898) and Amy (born in 1902) were daughters of William Lewis Hardy and his wife Alice Samantha Lovelace. Alice died in 1903 just before Amy's first birthday. I have written a little about this branch of the family (see this post here for further information about Amy) but realize I do not have much documented here on this blog. With some time on my hands during this holiday season, I write this post as an attempt to remedy that and help ensure that some of the visual memories I have of these ancestors are not lost. I love that this medium is a great vehicle for doing so. The above photograph of Ruby and Amy...

When we tell the story of the ancestors who have gone before, the details we start with are often only traces left behind from the past. It is best to compile evidence from several different sources in order to see the story from a broader perspective and create the clearest picture possible. With the layers of time, sometimes it is hard to decipher and describe the most accurate of tales. Learning the how, when, why and by whom for each record or piece of evidence is also helpful. Without that knowledge, it can be hard to uncover the actual truth. The past is indeed a different country. We are just describing it from our perspective at this point in time, based on what we know or have gathered. Take the story of little Amasa, for instance: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60766750/amasa-h_-williams A modern-day photograph of his tombstone (above) found on the Find-A-Grave website under the Jefferson Street Cemetery in Ellicottville, New York provides us with the ba...

Thirty years ago this year, I began pursuing what has developed into a lifelong passion for family history. My paternal grandmother passed away that January. At the funeral, someone pulled out an old family bible and someone else shared old letters that included additional family information. From that point on, I was hooked! Over the years, I have learned many valuable lessons about myself as well as my roots. Family history for me has been almost a spiritual calling. In September of 2011, I started this family history blog to share what I have gathered and learned on a wider scale. I named it “Wisteria” for the feeling the word evokes in me in terms of wistful longing. I also explained in an early blog post that shortly after launching the blog, I ran across some early writing of mine done in 1995. In that writing, I recounted a dream I had in which I found a book that held the answers to all my genealogy problems (a wish any genealogist can relate to). The book was call...

The image above is a scan from the heritage album I originally put together to show my sister's grand-kids that their grandmother was once a little girl. For it is true that our grandmas were once little girls. I was lucky to have copies of photographs showing pictures not only of my sister and mother but also my grandmother as a little girl. This is the only photograph of my grandmother's grandfather (who died about five years after the photo was taken) known to me which makes it even more special. I am excited to note that I will soon have the opportunity to travel to the land of my forefathers' birth for a visit next month. Martin was born in Niawier in the Friesland province of the Netherlands in 1851. He was married to Tjeerdtje Terpstra in 1872 and together they had eight children, losing four of them in early infancy and childhood. After also losing his wife, Martin took his remaining family to America and settled in Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan in 1891...

Ah, the wonders of modern DNA testing! With it can be found long-lost kin and surprises along the way. DNA has been key in several discoveries in some of my family lines in recent months. A recent DNA cousin find even led to solving a mystery on a mutual collateral ancestor for which no DNA testing was involved. After taking a DNA test and enthusiastically adding to her online family tree, my niece connected me to a cousin (one generation removed) who lives out west. His father (who was actually my first cousin) died when he was young and the family drifted apart. Though I had asked kin for more details years ago, I was never able to keep up-to-date with that branch. Now I know his birthday (we were born in the same year) and that of his brother's as well as the names and birth dates of his children. His eldest son is among those of the tenth generation of the Watts family with roots in Halifax County, Virginia and shares a namesake that goes back about eight generations within t...

When visiting my maternal half-sister this past spring, I started a recipe project using her mother-in-law's old handwritten recipes. While there, my sister showed me a large black case and said she believed it was my paternal grandfather's. When I opened it, I discovered an accordion.While my grandfather played the fiddle all his life and at least one of his uncles played the banjo for local dances in Western Kentucky, I did not think an accordion had anything to do with the musical influence on that side of my family.  I have always correlated accordions with polka music and late-nineteenth or twentieth-century immigrants which does not fit with my paternal family's history whose roots go back to the 1700s in Virginia. I suggested instead that the accordion might have belonged to her husband's family instead as they immigrated much later from Poland. He did not recall it being part of his family either, though. I left the accordion there when I headed back home ...