Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day!

Did you know that the celebration of Memorial Day started with the Civil War? It's true!

It was originally called Decoration Day and it began to commemorate the fallen soldiers of both the Union and Confederate armies. (Check out more cool facts on Mental Floss!)

These days, however, we remember and are thankful to soldiers from many different wars and conflicts, not only the Civil War.

Do you have any Civil War veterans in your family tree?

I wasn't sure if I did, but I found an easy way to find the answer.

It started because of a friend in my Civil War class who was very proud of having family members who fought in the war. (Happy, excited proud, not pride proud). And it got me thinking… My mom's mom's family had been in Virginia for generations. Surely I had Civil War vets in my line…

The U.S. National Park Service keeps a database of Civil War soldiers, and it's very easy to use. 

To begin, I went through my tree and found probable candidates for war, meaning I looked for men from states that fought in the Civil War who would have been old enough to fight from 1861-1865. (The Civil War is a great point to have on a timeline). 

I located some likely ancestors and plugged their names into the data base. The search asks that you guess whether your soldier was fighting for the Union or Confederacy, and since my family was from Virginia I knew they would have fought for the Confederacy. After a few guesses, and trial and error… I found someone! 

It was so exciting! I had an ancestor who fought in the Civil War! He lived and took part in a major part of history- that's amazing!

Once I had his page with information I was able to add it to his Family Search page. BAM! Now when I view my ancestor on my family tree it also shows his service record. 

Memorial Day can be an exciting day to think back on those who came before us and fought so we could enjoy the peace and freedoms we have today. 

Perhaps you have a close family member who served and you want to remember them too. Today would be a great day to pull up their Family Search page and write some memories. Especially with families gathering today for this holiday, it could be a good time to talk about family history. 

I know that I'm thankful to my Civil War vet ancestor as well as my three grandfathers, and many uncles for their service. I'm grateful for my family, and this special day to remember all that they did. 

Here's a gorgeous picture of the Washington Monument through Cherry Blossoms on the Potomac River. During the Civil War many men marched through the Nation's Capital to reach battles in the South.

Freedom in not free. 

A younger me at the Lincoln Memorial. Grateful to Abraham Lincoln and his hand in keeping the Union together. 

Happy Memorial Day and Happy Hunting! 

Family & History

Family History. Family & History. There are two parts to the work we do as we hunt for our ancestors. We want to find our family- their birth dates, death dates, locations of both events, family members and all that. But we also want to learn about them. 
We want to know their history.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to inherit or have access to the personal items of family members that are long past (or perhaps a distant family member does have access to those items and is willing to share with us). 
When my maternal grandfather passed away my family was left his navy footlocker with uniform, old photos and other personal items. It's been fantastic to look through!
However, it's rare to magically and suddenly inherit a perfect box full of all the information we need. Old photographs, letters, and pieces of their life's journey along with a handwritten autobiography informing us of all the amazing details we crave. Wouldn't that be amazing though? 
Instead what we DO have are contextual clues, and history. By matching up the years that our ancestors were alive to what we know about history can tell us a lot without ever finding that coveted diary. 
What can we know about our ancestors?
We can know who the President, King or Queen was during their life.
We can know what music was popular during their life. 
We can look up fashion and see what kinds of clothes our ancestors were wearing.
We can see what wars were being fought during their lifetime.
We can see what plays, and books were being read and discussed during their lives.
We can see what kinds of jobs most people were going into in the adult years of their lives.
This information we gather can help us better understand who our ancestors were and what they went through even when we lack the personal stories.
Being able to find personal and exact information is always really exciting but piecing together the events of history and discovering how they line up to our ancestors lives can fill in a lot of the blanks.
A few years ago I got out a long piece of butcher paper (I had purchased the roll of paper from Ikea) and drew a timeline on it. Using a ruler I measured a quarter inch for each year starting in 1550 CE. I then wrote in major events from that year until the current time. It included wars, monarchs, eventually US Presidents, terms, etc. plus some events I really love, for example Shakespeare's birth and death dates and the publishing dates of favorite books such as "The Great Gatsby", and the year "Maple Leaf Rag" was the number one song in the USA. It was a bit of a project but totally worth it. I initially made the timeline to help with a school assignment in a history class but I kept it. When I got started into family history I found that I was really glad I had made the timeline because I'm able to occasionally roll it out to compare the years of ancestors. 
I found this especially helpful because knowing a specific ancestors' birth and death years I can see that they were a child during the War of 1812, and was a young adult during the Great Awakening. Then their formative adults years the witnessed the presidency of Andrew Jackson and all the politics that went along with it. With all these details it's fascinating to think about the kind of person that my ancestors could have been. 
If making a timeline of your own sounds exciting (and it really was a lot of fun to put together) I can post some of the dates I included on my own timeline. 
Well, what does this all mean? What this means is that family history is completely and totally do-able! The information is at our fingertips and readily available! We can hunt and we can find!
With minimal starting information, passion and enthusiasm we can be successful in working on our family history. Both parts of it- the family AND the history parts. 
Good luck Hunters and Huntresses! 

Suddenly...

May the 4th Be With You

Just a little Star Wars Day fun!
Happy Hunting! 

Storytellers of the Tribe

The decision and work that go into searching for our family's histories is one that transcends time. It is thrilling to think of what it means that our genealogy traces back into far flung history and that we get to find it and piece it together. 
Heritage Hunters and Huntresses- that's us! Often when we picture the adventurers of our time we think of the iconic Indiana Jones, Flynn Carson, Ben Gates etc and in each of their cases they had specific goals in exploring new information and fields of study and didn't allow failure to halt their expeditions. In the same way, we have our goal of Family History and searching our family's histories and we are breaking new ground in discovering information and stories that have long since passed away. In each example of these iconic adventurers they found difficulties along their path and kept moving forward. Even when things feel hard, keep searching! Keep discovering! Keep hunting! Our charge is heavy, and important- we are the storytellers of the tribe. 
Happy Hunting!