Lately I have been thinking about the work I have done with genealogy. I have talked about what I learned over the last twenty years but my knowledge of family history was very limited before that. There is an unwritten rule that said there is only one person per generation doing genealogy. For me I have a niece and great niece interested in genealogy but there was not much going on before me. As far as I know my parents could only go back two generations.
My mother knew more about her side but my dad did not talk about his side I think it had to do with the hard times back then. When we were young my brothers and I would ask dad some questions but all he would talk about were the good times. As I did more research on my dad’s early years I learned that he lost his little brother to influenza in 1920 when dad was eight years old. Then dad lost his mother when he was 17 years old, then his father died in an accident in the driveway at age 25.
My dad was on a train to California to start a new life when he got the word about the accident. He was in Portland, Maine, so he returned to Presque Isle to take over his father’s business and the house. I wonder what it would be like today if my grandfather had lived longer and my dad made it to California.
My mother had a lot of knowledge of her family in her head and she collected pictures and letters over the years that were a big help to me. We had many discussions over the years so I guess this was the start of my getting into genealogy. My mom had some knowledge about her uncle’s from when she was young, because they lived in the same town. There is so much I would like to know about grandparents and uncles but they did not share that with my mother and her brother and sisters. I would love to someday find someone who has a diary orjournal that was written by a member of the family.
What about you, do you have a story you could share with us, we would like to hear it. One thing that makes the Aroostook County Genealogy Society more interesting is the stories we share. All you have to do is type up a story and send or email it to Jay to put in the newsletter.
Respectfully submitted by Orland Smith
Vice President’s Message, June 2013 by Heather Feuerhelm is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at ac-gs.org.