The last few months have been an exciting and terrifying time for me.  I have been working on my family’s genealogy seriously since 1994. This was the year that I was married and the year that we moved near a LDS Family History Center.  It was also the year that I was diagnosed with cancer.  I think there is something very therapeutic for me that happens when I work on family history. I see all the horrible things (and the good things too!) that have occurred to the people who came before.  They survived their tragedies (although some did better than others). But I digress; I was talking about my journey with genealogy.  When I was in high school, I remember looking over all the charts that my maternal grandmother had given us over the years: Thayer, Standish, Alden, Thomas, Shirley and several others. Neatly typed charts of lineages, often back to the first comer. She and her cousin Edna spent years putting together the documentation to complete the applications for the Alden Kindred and The Mayflower Society.   If I recall correctly, this was during the 1970s while I was in elementary school.  It seems rather nerdy to me now, but I was actually a card carrying member of the Alden Kindred when I was in elementary school.

Family chart for Ferrers Shirley, created by Edna Cox in the 1970s

Enter the next generation! When I began my quest in 1994, I wrote letters to my grandmother and cousin Edna.  They gladly supplied me with copies of everything they had researched.  I had a great jumping off point with my maternal grandmother’s side of the family.  I wrote to my paternal grandmother as well.  She sent me copies of the Yegerlehner chart that she had worked on for years so I was pretty covered on that side of the family, too.  Like most family trees, there were mysteries!  My grandmother gently brushed me off when I asked about her family. I also did not know much about my maternal grandfather’s tree.  They were mostly farmers and merchants in eastern Indiana.  I had a chart that included all his great grandparents but all the lines basically stopped at 1800. My grandfather mentioned at one point that a cousin of his had joined the Sons of the American Revolution, but he wasn’t sure which branch. As I look back over the last 20 years, I sometimes amaze myself with how much I have learned about my family.

Letter written to Deborah Sweeney by her grandmother Gladys, in 1995

Over the last 10 years, I have become an armchair researcher.  My daughter was born in 2001 so I didn’t really have the time or energy to drive across town to the LDS center.  In the early days of my marriage, I had a weekly night that was mine for genealogy.  I would leave work, grab a sandwich at Subway, and eat it in the parking lot while I waited for the LDS center to open at 6:00. Once I stopped going to the LDS center regularly, I remember the early days of dial-up and waiting for census pages to download. This was prior to many of the censuses being indexed so I had to browse through counties and townships to search for my family. A slow process at best and a frustrating one when the dial-up was extra slow. I also started to branch out.  Not satisfied to search my own tree, I began work on my husband’s tree.  I did some work on the tree of my best friend from high school.  I discovered we had a surname in common and soon I had tracked down how our families were interrelated. My obsession has definitely grown since then. This week alone I have figured out how two more friends are also distant cousins, one purely by accident.

For the last five years (or more), I have been a member of NEHGS. As a perk of my membership, I receive a copy of the American Ancestors magazine. Several institutions and societies advertise in the magazine.  They offer research tours and genealogy courses.  I have always wanted to be a librarian.  It’s what I wanted to be when I grew up. I am an avid reader.  From elementary school through high school, I volunteered in my school library.  When I was 14, I volunteered as a candy striper at the local hospital.  I ended up working in the library photocopying research articles for physicians. My first paying job in high school, I worked at the local public library. When I applied to college, I looked at some schools that offered degrees in library science. The university I finally enrolled in did not have a library science program, so I settled first on being a history major.

Many of the genealogy courses that were advertised in the American Ancestors magazine are far from my present home.  With a job and a growing family, going away to school is an impossible goal. For the last few years, Boston University has offered an online program.  I began to stare wistfully at the ad and   even ventured online to check it out.  But the price tag was too high, especially with the way the economy was decimated a few years back.

Last spring, I decided that I needed to do something.  I started a Facebook page. If I couldn’t take the coursework, then I would start a platform for myself.  I could give advice to my friends and share research with other extended members of the family.  This summer, I started looking at Boston University’s online course again.  I also looked at a couple local colleges who were offering similar programs, but they didn’t seem as interesting. With the support of my wonderful husband who has endured hours of widowerhood due to my genealogy obsession, I signed up for the course that starts this January. It has been just over 12 years since I last was in school.  I received my teaching credential right after my daughter was born in 2001. I am very excited to be pushing myself to the next level of my genealogy career, but I am also terrified!  I know I am probably not alone when I sometimes have nightmares about oversleeping and missing classes.  Regardless, I think the excitement with win out and the terror will fade away.  So, here’s to the next adventure!  Huzzah!

©2012, copyright owned & written by Deborah Sweeney

I don’t consider myself to be much of a writer. My dad, now, he’s the writer. He is currently writing three books. He keeps a journal which he writes in every day. He has been doing this since I was about one. I’m not going to tell you how old I am, but let’s just say, he’s been writing for several decades. Every time I have ever attempted to keep a journal, I quit after a few weeks, a couple of days, whatever. It just doesn’t hold my interest.

So what does hold my interest? Genealogy! And absolutely everything related to family trees, history, old photographs, clothing and costume history, you name it. I’m one of those certifiable people who show up at family reunions and can tell you how everyone is related. I can even tell you what third cousins, once removed means. I have tracked down family trees of close friends, in-laws, co-workers, just because.  To me, it’s fun, it’s a puzzle, I’ve got nothing better to do (than cleaning house, making dinner for my family, playing with my kids, going to work). I’ve always known about my family’s history. It’s my grandmothers’ fault. I can blame them. They were both interested so they got me hooked. My maternal grandmother was a Mayflower descendant, a member of two hereditary societies. My paternal grandmother did a lot to track down and organize the tree of my grandfather/her husband’s family, Swiss immigrants who arrived in the early 1850s. They even went to Switzerland to meet distant cousins. So what I’m saying is: genealogy is in my blood.

I have become the family’s chronicler and archivist. I am the one people turn to when they have a question about the family tree. When my paternal grandmother died and my father was left with the responsibility of cleaning out her house, he was smart enough to save the things I wanted: the old photographs and the letters that my grandmother had been saving for decades. My grandfather served in the navy during World War II. Like many during the war, my grandparents wrote to each other daily. My grandmother saved all their letters. As the family archivist, this is one mighty boon. I know more about my grandparents today than I did when they were alive. We didn’t live near each other when I was growing up, and consequently only saw them, maybe once or twice a year. One of the things that I have wanted to do for years is to organize those letters and make them available to the rest of the family and frankly, the world. History is amazing! Especially the history of everyday people who live their lives around the big events that shape the world. And someday, hopefully not very soon, I will get to organize and read my father’s journals. It will be another chapter in my family’s history brought to light. And you know what; I might just turn out to be a writer, too. Some things just tend to run in the family.