The Spark

Can you remember the exact moment that you became interested in finding out more about your ancestors?  If you can, then I hope you will take some time to write about that moment and share it with your family.

When I was 9 years old, the only grandmother I can remember passed away. From the time of Grandma's death until Grandpa died about six years later, Dad would stop by Grandpa’s house once a week, on the way home from work, and bring him home to our house for dinner.  I loved having Grandpa come for dinner, mostly because after dinner we would have the only regular family game time I can remember.  Mom would get out a deck of cards and we would sit around the table to play Rummy or Tripoley (Royal Rummy).  I have not played either game in over 30 years and don’t remember the rules of either, but I do remember the fun I had playing these games weekly with my grandpa, parents, and siblings.  This game time is a treasured memory.

After the card game was over, Dad would drive Grandpa home and he would often invite one or more of us children to come with him.  On one of these trips, as Dad was driving down a particular road, Grandpa pointed to an old farm house up on a hill and said, “That looks like the place where I used to come to visit my mother’s people when I was a boy.” 

His mother’s people? 

I had never thought about Grandpa having a mother.  And apparently, not only did he have a mother, but his mother had “people” too!  Was that old farmhouse really where his mother’s family had lived?  I tucked Grandpa’s comment in the back of my mind and wondered about it now and then, even after the old farmhouse on the hill was razed and the land had been developed into a golf course as part of a new county park.

Fast forward about 10 years and I was living in an apartment near the county courthouse.  In recent years I had discovered a little about Grandpa’s family from my aunt but wanted to know more.  One day I happened to have a rare day off work and my sister was visiting me.   I told her about Grandpa’s comment of years earlier and asked if she’d like to take a walk to the county courthouse with me.  She was intrigued and agreed to the adventure. 

When we got there, we were directed to a particular room with a mural-sized map of the county on the wall.  A man asked what he could help us with.  I pointed to the county park on the map and told him that I wanted to find out who had owned that land before it became a park.  I got the impression he'd never had a request like that before, but he got out some microfiche and, after looking through them, wrote some numbers down and sent us off with them to another room. 

After another adventure in microfiche and a few more helpful people, my sister and I ended up in a huge, musty smelling room full of shelves that were filled end to end with old, leather bound books.  Another helpful person, using some numbers we had written down, selected a few of the books.  We looked up the page numbers we had noted for the volumes given to us and, after looking through a few books, found what we had hoped to find:  right before us was a deed involving the sale of a portion of the land in question nearly a hundred years earlier!  The seller was my grandfather’s grandmother, Addie. Tears welled up as I realized that I had proven Grandpa right - that old farmhouse was the place where he visited his mother's people.

While Grandpa’s comment of years earlier had been the moment in time that sparked my interest in family history, that musty volume of recorded deeds was the moment when my interest caught fire. In the 30+ years since then, that fire has steadily burned within my heart and mind and I hope it is never extinguished.