albymangroves replied to your post
Sep. 5th, 2016 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2bNWinb:albymangroves replied to your post “albymangroves replied to your photo “from the depths of my external…”
I have like a handful of pictures of when I was little but none at all of my folks or earlier. I’m very envious of how available your family history is! <3
Oh, that’s too bad. You changed countries, though, right? My father’s family history is extremely scanty; he knows the names of the four grandparents who emigrated, and that’s it, he doesn’t even know their parents’ names, let alone have any images. He has one tantalizing photo album that from the clothing and context is clearly someone’s trip back to Ireland to see their family after being established in the US, but there are zero captions, and we don’t know who one single solitary person is in the photos. No idea. All these wonderful snapshots, and no idea who they are or why. All we can figure out is the approximate date from the fashions the people are wearing.
My mother’s family, though, I have almost an embarrassment of riches there. Grandma was super into history and genealogy, and was an award-winning researcher; Mom has continued that work and is writing books about everything she can think of. The added factor is that everyone knew Grandma was the Family Historian, so people from the entire extended family developed the habit of giving her anything old they found while cleaning out various old folks’ houses– so she wound up with a house full of antiques and all the stories to go with them, all the old family Bibles with the births and deaths recorded in them (not useful legally, but excellent sources to use to narrow down for example which census in which location to check for confirmation on people’s existence)– all of that kind of stuff. Some of that stuff, my uncle had and lost, because he was a hoarder and not necessarily careful with his possessions, but after his death Mom was the one left with the task of going through his house, and she found most of the important things she was looking for.
And it is a treasure to have– not just the photos, but the context.
Mom’s current project is doing this with the (now-extinct) family who built the house my sister bought– the last Morrison died in the 90s, but the family farmed that land from 1774 through about 1939, and Mom has already tracked down every single person buried in the cemetery on the property. She’s now on the track of every person who lived in that house from its original construction date of 1789 until the last Morrison moved out and the new owners left the house vacant for 70 years.
It’s too bad there are no current relatives surviving, but she might track some down, and even if nobody’s alive to be the descendant of these people, it is such a fascinating encapsulation of American history. The first Morrison actually took up arms for the British Loyalists in the Revolution, and must have been a fast talker because the Continentals didn’t seize his property after his capture at the Battle of Bennington! And although he was born in New York, he never fully mastered English; his native language was German, and he couldn’t write in either language, but all of his sons could. His wife probably couldn’t even speak English, because he had to conduct a lot of her business for her in her later years even though she was of sound mind– probably because increasing numbers of her customers didn’t speak German (she sold eggs and milk). We know this from the probate file when his will was contested, including the detail that he cut his own firewood until he was ninety.
Anyway. I’m going on about it too much. Later I’ll find that folder of daguerreotypes and the notes Mom made on who everyone probably was. The thing I like most in history is the stories; memorizing lines of dates and lists of Contributing Factors is really super boring but thinking about the fact that three big beautiful surviving houses on this street were built in 1825 because that was the year the patroon started selling estates to long-term tenants kind of drives it home a lot. 1825! and he was in effect ending serfdom! Chew on that.
I have like a handful of pictures of when I was little but none at all of my folks or earlier. I’m very envious of how available your family history is! <3
Oh, that’s too bad. You changed countries, though, right? My father’s family history is extremely scanty; he knows the names of the four grandparents who emigrated, and that’s it, he doesn’t even know their parents’ names, let alone have any images. He has one tantalizing photo album that from the clothing and context is clearly someone’s trip back to Ireland to see their family after being established in the US, but there are zero captions, and we don’t know who one single solitary person is in the photos. No idea. All these wonderful snapshots, and no idea who they are or why. All we can figure out is the approximate date from the fashions the people are wearing.
My mother’s family, though, I have almost an embarrassment of riches there. Grandma was super into history and genealogy, and was an award-winning researcher; Mom has continued that work and is writing books about everything she can think of. The added factor is that everyone knew Grandma was the Family Historian, so people from the entire extended family developed the habit of giving her anything old they found while cleaning out various old folks’ houses– so she wound up with a house full of antiques and all the stories to go with them, all the old family Bibles with the births and deaths recorded in them (not useful legally, but excellent sources to use to narrow down for example which census in which location to check for confirmation on people’s existence)– all of that kind of stuff. Some of that stuff, my uncle had and lost, because he was a hoarder and not necessarily careful with his possessions, but after his death Mom was the one left with the task of going through his house, and she found most of the important things she was looking for.
And it is a treasure to have– not just the photos, but the context.
Mom’s current project is doing this with the (now-extinct) family who built the house my sister bought– the last Morrison died in the 90s, but the family farmed that land from 1774 through about 1939, and Mom has already tracked down every single person buried in the cemetery on the property. She’s now on the track of every person who lived in that house from its original construction date of 1789 until the last Morrison moved out and the new owners left the house vacant for 70 years.
It’s too bad there are no current relatives surviving, but she might track some down, and even if nobody’s alive to be the descendant of these people, it is such a fascinating encapsulation of American history. The first Morrison actually took up arms for the British Loyalists in the Revolution, and must have been a fast talker because the Continentals didn’t seize his property after his capture at the Battle of Bennington! And although he was born in New York, he never fully mastered English; his native language was German, and he couldn’t write in either language, but all of his sons could. His wife probably couldn’t even speak English, because he had to conduct a lot of her business for her in her later years even though she was of sound mind– probably because increasing numbers of her customers didn’t speak German (she sold eggs and milk). We know this from the probate file when his will was contested, including the detail that he cut his own firewood until he was ninety.
Anyway. I’m going on about it too much. Later I’ll find that folder of daguerreotypes and the notes Mom made on who everyone probably was. The thing I like most in history is the stories; memorizing lines of dates and lists of Contributing Factors is really super boring but thinking about the fact that three big beautiful surviving houses on this street were built in 1825 because that was the year the patroon started selling estates to long-term tenants kind of drives it home a lot. 1825! and he was in effect ending serfdom! Chew on that.
