Yesterday Dan and I accompanied my mom and dad to a family reunion in a nearby town. The official name of the reunion is the Webb Family Reunion, and no one in our family is named Webb, so you may well ask what we were doing there. The answer was that Dad and the oldest Webb family member there "share a great-grandfather." Confused? I have always been.
I came home determined to make some sense of this relationship and got on the computer. I knew this man's name so I started with him. Aha!! There he was, along with his two wives and all his children. His second child, a daughter with his first wife, married a Webb and became the matriarch of the reunion group, while my dad's grandfather (my great-grandfather) was the third child born to him and his second wife. (He had two children with his first wife and nine with his second.) I could click on my great-grandfather's name and follow his marriage and see my grandmother and her siblings, and on down to Dad, and even to me and Bruder Bear. Oh my goodness!
It all makes perfect sense to me now, but somehow that phrase "shared a great-grandfather" always made me think of someone cut in half. Or something.
Out of curiosity, I decided to do some more checking, this time on my dad's father's side of the family. I'm making some headway, and was delighted to find several pictures. I'd never seen either one of them before. The most amazing one is of my great-great grandmother. She was born in 1844 and died in 1881, just in her late thirties, probably following the birth of her eighth child (I'm guessing here since the year of his birth is the same). Her name was Belle:
And here is a picture of her oldest daughter, who became my great-grandmother and helped to inspire me to quilt and knit, as a young woman. Her name was Carrie:
Sometimes it's positively amazing to think of all the family that came before us. I'm thinking I just may be picking up a new hobby...
New hobby -- genealogy? Where did you find this family history? -- Ancestry.com?
ReplyDeleteI am not a genealogist, but I should probably establish my tree someplace so that I can review it from time to time or for the benefit of my children. Working with several second cousins, we have been able to piece together some family info that we thought was lost, and that's gratifying.
I guess you could say my new hobby is looking up family and actually I'm doing it for Dad. He knows so little about his father's family history since he lost his father as such a young age. I've found quite a bit and it's so fun to call and tell him my latest news.
DeleteIt's so good that you're doing this now to share with your dad. The research you provide to him might spark more family facts and this will add to your research. When they're ready, your children and grandchildren will be blessed by what you have gleaned.
DeleteIt sounds like your philosophy of family history is like mine. I want to know enough about the tree so that I understand it, but I really want to know about their life experience.
Exactly! :-)
DeleteI need to expand on the above one word reply. :-) I love to think on those people and wonder about their day to day lives. Carrie has always had such an influence on my life, she and Sarah Jane, Dad's other grandmother, and yet I never knew her. It's amazing to see this picture of her as a young woman. All those people, coming together, marrying, having children, and leading down to me, and my children and grandchildren. It's very thought provoking.
DeleteThought provoking, yes. I love my study of retro womanhood, wherever I can find it -- yours, mine, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Samuel Smiles (Happy Homes and the Hearts that Make them), etc. I think there was a focus on character that society as a whole doesn't draw on today. Of course, you have cherished this family link all along. You're just expanding it now.
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