My Family History

I write because I just have to write.  It's kind of a compulsion!  When I sit down at the keyboard and see a blank white screen on this blog or in a word processing program, I just go.  I have a whole list of topics I want to write about.  I'm writing a family history.  That's fun in so many ways.  Writing my memories of events, checking what facts are verifiable, getting input from other family members and their recollections is a great experience.

My cousin Joe is actually researching our family geneology.  He makes trips to courthouses and cemeteries, and has compiled lots of facts about our mutual grandfather.  I don't know how many of the relatives have discovered his blog, but if they do they'll find it interesting.

I was able to help him with a point of confusion over names at one point.  I liked doing that.  My great great something or other came to the US from Europe, and language was a barrier to communication.  Immigration officials made spelling guesses and errors.  Record keeping back in the 19th and early 20th century was by hand (some of it beautifully written).  So sometimes names were written as they would have been in the 'old country' and sometimes they were changed, or Americanized.

Thinking about those great-greats and what they went through makes me think that they were very brave!  Could you pick up and sail across an ocean not knowing what you might find on the other side?  Sometimes there was family over here already, but someone had to be first!

That's probably how the family got this crazy ability to adapt, to cope, to deal with any situation.  We're kind of amazing!