Start

I have been considering starting a blog for the last couple months.  A place to share the stories and findings I have come across while digging into my family history.  Yesterday I stumbled across Amy Johnson Crow’s Facebook page and her 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge and figured now is as good a time as ever.  Week one’s prompt is “Start”...how appropriate for my first post, but also the backstory as to how I became interested in my family history.

When I was a little girl, I would get one week at my grandparents’ cabin by myself with just Grandma and Grandpa (my brother and cousins each got their own weeks as well).  Fishing, gardening, swimming, tagging along to the neighboring cabins while the adults played cards.  But my favorite part of the week was when my Grandma would drag the blue trunk full of photos out of the front closet and share stories of her childhood, her teenage years, her parents and grandparents and other relatives.

Oh, how I wish I had written those stories down!!  Oh, how I wish I had known to pay closer attention and ask more questions about her life.  And the life of my Grandpa, who died when I was just two years old.  And the life of her parents.  Her dad fought in WWI, lost his mother at the age of six, had 20 siblings (5 full and 15 half) and was basically raised by an older half-sister.  Her mom emigrated from Germany at the age of three with her parents and five siblings.  Oh, to know what her grandparents went through!!

I lost my Grandma in 2010, and with her all those stories and her memories.  I was fortunate that she had given me a book for my high school graduation called Grandmother Remembers, where she filled in the blanks, added photos, and shared some stories.  I am a scrapbooker at heart for the last 20+ years so I started putting together a memorial album of her life and that’s when I realized I didn’t have photos of her dad’s parents.  And so my quest began…

My dad has all of my grandparents’ photos scanned.  When I couldn’t find any photos of her paternal grandparents I asked him about them.  He had no idea if any existed and ended up putting me in touch with a distant cousin of my grandmother’s who hosted a family reunion in Kansas every year.  How did I not know about these reunions before??  She started sharing info with me and put me in touch with her sister, who has shared tons of photos and stories.  I received a photo of my great great grandfather, Samuel Bartley, but still no photo of my great great grandmother, Hannah May (Catuska) Bartley.  I became frustrated and impatient not being able to find the info I was looking for and my family history search didn’t last long.

Until 2017!!  Early in the year I found an article on Facebook regarding free classes at the Minnesota Historical Society.  I knew one of my best friends was also interested in learning her family history so we made plans to go and we quickly found ourselves obsessed!!  I joined a ton of Facebook genealogy groups.  Restarted my tree on Ancestry.  I started finding distant cousins I hadn’t known before via Facebook and Ancestry - we have exchanged stories and photos and I have learned a lot about my family.  I am so happy to have met them all.

I was very fortunate to have had my Grandmas in my life as long as I did.  I was almost 40 when I lost my Dad’s mom and was lucky enough to have my Mom’s mom in my life for another three and a half years.  While my Grandma Phyllis was an open book and loved to share her stories, my Grandma Iris did not like to talk about the past.  I am finding that was actually quite common with people from her generation.  Both of my Grandpas died when I was just two years old.  I don’t know a lot about them but I am learning.  My Grandpa Roger was an only child whose parents divorced when he was young.  His father was not really a part of his life and the Lewis line is my brick wall.  My Grandpa Ken came from a large farming family with nine siblings.  I have connected with three distant Dorf cousins and have started getting to know the family. Both of my grandmothers married again and I will eventually start working on the lines of the only men I ever knew as Grandpas, Stan and Harry.

So that’s how I got my start.  My goal is to put together a family album full of photos and stories, hopefully for each branch of our tree.  My 2018 genealogy goals include: receiving my parents’ DNA results and finding more distant cousins to share info/photos with; finding my great grandfather’s military medical records; finding more info on my great great grandparents on the Lewis side, even if it means paying someone at the Kentucky Historical Society to pull records; roadtripping with Stacey to Hiawatha and Powhattan, Kansas to learn more about the Bartley clan; day tripping to Taylors Falls to visit the Kahbakong Cemetery and Coffee Talk coffee shop (which used to be the home my great-uncle and great-aunt lived in); many visits to the Minnesota Historical Society.  I’d love to meet some of the distant cousins I talk with via email and Facebook in real life.  And I guess I can already cross “Start a blog” off my genealogy checklist for 2018.

By the way, after seven years I did finally receive a photo of my great great grandmother, Hannah, but that’s a story for another day...