Thank You Dad.....

 

 My sweet wonderful Dad passed away 5 years ago but he still surprises and delights me.  He left me, literally, about 14 boxes of assorted papers and pictures.  The assorted papers cover everything from his military service to warranties on a screw drivers.  He was always interested in genealogy but Ancestry.com hadn't been invented yet and old time research without the Internet was time consuming.  A few of the boxes he made a special effort to hide, squirreled them away in the crawl space of my parents' home so my mom wouldn't throw them away. These boxes had all the old photos in them.

Many of the photos don't have any markings or notations on them.  I went through one box of interesting photos but they were all unmarked.  But just for the hell of it, I made a quick pass through the box one more time.  And then I found it......an old photo which says in my dad's handwriting...."Ma's Ma and her brother Casimer."  There's also a Lithuanian hand written note which Google Translator basically translates as:  Mama sends greetings.

And so...Ursule...my great grandmother and I ....meet.

I was jumping around like a cat with a bunch of hot fleas when I discovered the notation....doing that happy little dance that means you found something extraordinary.  I believe I also gave out the "Genealogy Whoop," that special cry of joy when you find a family link. What luck....how I wish I could hug my dad for that simple little inscription he left me which I can verify in the very faded Lithuanian text.

My great grandmother.  I've been staring at her on my home screen for a full day now.  She quite a woman....dressed in that rabbit fur coat (my hub reminded me that Ursule means bear but I don't think that's a bear pelt). She's wide....real wide.....with enough bulk to stop a truck.  And that babuska!   Wow....no small dainty thing for great grandma...that's one sizable scarf.

But she has a good smile....and looks rock steady.....actually she looks very North African Berber to me....my hub says she looks Indian...as in American Indian (who came from Siberian-Mongolian-Euro Asia stock).

She looks strong.....tough....but that smile makes her look generous not mean. I immediately liked her.  She looks like someone I'd love to know and talk to.....

Ursule...Ursule.....so nice to meet you.....I am your great grand daughter.

A Tale of Two Families.....

So I sign up for Ancestry.com for 6 months...one of those discounted memberships that let's me see the world.  It's time to do some genealogy work on my family and my hub wants to participate too.

Now you've all see those ads for Ancestry....find your family....hit the little green leaf and off you go....whooosh down your ancestry lane finding your Renaissance great great great great great grandfather etc etc.

So the first day we get out account.....I sit down and look at my poor straggly tree (which currently looks like it's the prototype for the Charlie Brown Xmas video...you remember the thin little crooked tree?) and I poke around.  The leaves I have on my tree which contain hints obviously come from some cousins which used the free trail for two weeks and plucked down some names of immediate family I know already.   Yes I know my aunt and I know my uncle died ....not exactly helpful....and certainly not going beyond the last 50 years of family history.

Then my hub tries his hand at his family tree.....presses a COUPLE of leaves...and viola....he has at least 400 years of history on one side and maybe 200 years on the side....complete with photos from relatives who visited Czechoslovakia and took pictures of a house his family and succeeding generations lived in for a 100 years ...etc etc etc.

MUST BE NICE.

So every time he goes on Ancestry, I give him a dirty look....and say something snide like , "Adding another 100 years to your tree?  finding another branch that goes back maybe a thousand years????"

SIGH.

As for me.....I believe I now know all of my grandmother's siblings.  Hooray.  Do I know all of their descendants?  No....because each sibling had like 100 kids (or at least 10) and in my family....people loved to keep the same names around.....Joseph, John, Frank.....plus the same middle name too....so this makes research interesting.  Am I looking at Joseph John Frank's record the ORIGINAL born in the 1880's or the Joseph John Frank record from the guy born 1910 or his cousin WITH THE SAME NAME born 1920?

Well....on my Lithuanian side, I have at least found cousins doing heroic work during World War II and being accused of book smuggling.....obtaining Lithuanian books about history and culture and smuggling them into Lithuanian after the Russians took over and banned native language books.

Ha....better than my husband's relatives...who obviously were sitting in their huts....documenting their ancestors by candlelight.

Oh this family research is going to take a very very long time........