Have you ever been to a place where you immediately felt good to be there?
I just found one, and I can't wait to go back.
Last time I wrote here, last year, I had just learned about findagrave.com, which finally sparked my interest in genealogy.
My brother the genealogy hobbyist keeps telling me I have to have the approximately 3500 painstakingly entered family names he has put together over the past 20 years or so; he doesn't quite understand that for me, much of the pleasure comes from the process of discovery. I prefer to work on the family jigsaw puzzle on my own time, in my own way, in whichever direction my inclinations take me for the moment.
The first time around he sent the data to me on a flash drive; however, my puppy chewed that up. Now he's burned a CD and tells me I should have the data and need to buy the software.
More important than having the family names has been seeing where my family lived and died.
In February of this year, I made a pilgrimage to two small cemeteries in a small Texas town; there, I saw the graves of two sets of great great grandparents. Their granddaughter was my Granny B; Granny B's mother, my Nanny, the great-grandmother with whom I learned how to sew my first stitches, and who pieced my wedding quilt top, had parents buried there. Granny and Nanny were links to these great great grandparents I never knew. I am part of them, but more important, they are part of me. They are still here because I am.
They became alive for me in a way I had never expected. I felt part of a family in a way that I had forgotten about. I guess that happens when people leave their home states, or their home towns, and families have to start all over. The family leaves behind other family, and you grow apart sometimes, and things gets lost. I never realized what I had lost until I found it again that day in that cemetery.
I had seen the grave photos in Findagrave, and I have seen some photos of the great great grandparents themselves. Walking up to the large headstone of my great great grandfather, I was touched to tears. LOTS of tears. Over the years, when visiting from California, I had gone to that town to enjoy some of Texas's most famous sausage, not realizing that my Granny B's four grandparents were all buried a few miles away. I had roots in that part of the country.
In September, I visited Rhode Island, to find my dad's dad's roots. Gramps came to Texas from RI as a teenager, and I don't think he ever went back. I wanted to know more about this stocky little grandfather, who had the bulldog tattooed at the base of his throat, who had an accent different from my Texas one.
Through Gramps's mother, I am a 10th great granddaughter of the Englishman who founded Providence, RI, Roger Williams, so of course I have some history in that state going back to the 1600s, at least on one side. I just didn't expect the history to feel so personal or for The Ocean State to appeal to me from the get-go.
A year to the day of creating online memorials for some of my Gramps's family, I stood in the cemetery in Rhode Island where a small group of my family lay at rest. These were not the Williams descendants; these were Gramps's dad's family. That small group of nine, bearers of my maiden name, has poignant stories. My great great grandmother, my Gramps's grandmother, lost all 5 of her children long before she died: her 3 daughters died in March 1886, ages 17, 8, and 3. I haven't yet found out why. Her sons died at 28 and 32. All five of her children have only their first names, nothing else, carved on simple headstones. Her husband died before she did, too. Great great grandmother Sarah ended her life in a home for aged women in Providence.
I know what Sarah looked like, a dignified woman with white hair and blue eyes, a direct gaze, fine features and a forthright carriage to her head, and beautiful skin, even in old age. I think how strong she must have been, and how proud I am to be her great great granddaughter, to carry her within me. I think I even look a little bit like her, which makes me feel good. When my hair turns all white, I hope I look as beautiful as she did. I think of her often, now.
There were other graves and other locations in Rhode Island. The apple orchard we visited while looking for one historical cemetery actually held another cemetery, and in that cemetery I also found relatives of a 4th great grandmother. I sat in my rental car, crunching a honey crisp apple, and it was slowly dawning on me that my family had lived and worked and died there.
A little later that day, I had the chance to stand in another cemetery behind a pretty white church, and just inside the white picket fence were my 4th great grandparents, and they were connected to the people in the apple orchard and that whole area a couple of miles away.
It doesn't matter that my family name isn't on the orchard and that I don't own that property on paper. My kinfolk are buried in their backyard and down a few of the local roads. I know I belong there. I feel it in my bones.
Two hundred years later, I was back in the 'hood.
