The Gene Puzzle

It’s kind of funny but my recent quest for faith and my goal to reconnect with my family has led me to yet another quest of sorts. Last night I began working on researching my family tree.

I bought The Family Tree Maker 2006 Deluxe version which comes with a year subscription to the US records for Ancestry.com; I paid $70 for the software and the subscription is a $180 value which is a really good deal and I highly recommend it if you’re a beginner and just getting started.

I sat down and input the few details I knew. The fact is that growing up, I never paid attention to who was related to who and whatnot. I kind of wish I had been paying attention. I managed to pull some information about my mom’s side out of the recent obituary on my grandmother. I tried to find the obituaries for my other relatives who’ve died in the last 20 years but I couldn’t find them online anywhere.

I managed to use what little information I had to fish out other information about some of the family but not a whole lot.

So I did what any smart person would do. I called my mom and she and I chatted for a good hour or so. She was able to recall some of the information about both families off the top of her head; mostly it was names of people. I’m back to my great great grandparents on one side of the family now, but I’m still trying to gather specific info on the folks I already knew about.

Anyway, it turns out that her father was into geneology and after the fire that occurred when my stepgrandmother was murdered, my mom managed to rescue some of his research. She’s going to go out to the barn next week and try to find it and copy it for me. I wish I’d gotten to know my grandfather better — after he died, I found out he wanted to be a writer too and I have one of his short stories stored away somewhere. It seems that he and I could have had fabulous conversations now that I’m grown up and share some of his interests. But back then, he was the scary sick man who smoked while on his oxygen tank.

But anyway, I’m already learning lots. I always joked about how my mother is the first in her line not to be divorced, but I never realized how true. I mean on both sides of her family, there were multiple divorces and marriages. Just sorting them all out is going to be a task in itself. Not to mention the changing of spelling of last names here and there. Heck, it turns out I have some French lineage on my mother’s side but you wouldn’t have known it because they changed their name.

I guess I kind of started this to prove and disprove some family rumors; you know me and my quests for truth. For instance, my dad’s great great something or other supposedly came over during the Potato Famine and lied about being Irish. However, my dad supposedly also has a journal from a relative that served in the Civil War. My great grandmother on my mom’s side swore we were part Cherokee — my friend N2 swears everyone claims they’re part Cherokee just like everyone was Caesar or Cleopatra in a former life. My mother also claims that her father’s line goes back to a Scottish clan and while I’m hopeful for that one, I have my suspicions…

Anyway, it’s like a big puzzle and it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. Plus, it’s already bringing my mother and I closer. She wants to go to the UK with me once I get that far back on my dad’s line and make a vacation of researching family over there — you know, going from church to church looking at log books and tombstones. Kind of neat when you think of it.

tags: genealogy, Family Tree Maker, dysfunctional family

One comment

1. on February 23, 2006 at 9:29 am

   Tamara said:

   Very cool. And ambitious. I’ve often wanted to do a family tree but I’m too lazy! Ah well, maybe some day. Keep us posted. The trip would be amazing.

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