The branches of a family tree are wrought with many twisting and turning branches and for those who want to take the time to turn over the leaves and begin researching, what they find can be fascinating. But once a genealogy is begun, the searchers say the fruits of their harvest keep them hungering for more. Where, why and how to begin Allison Stacy, editor of “Family Tree Magazine,” said the best way to begin research is with the living relatives. “There are a few basic steps to getting started and those include always beginning with yourself and working backwards,” she said. “Take stock of everything you already know about your family, record that on basic worksheets such as pedigree charts and family group sheets and go from there.” After talking with the relatives, you want to look for “home sources,” Stacy said. Those include family history documents such as birth, death, and marriage certificates, family Bibles, funeral cards, letters, diaries, postcards, photos, newspaper clippings and so forth. “Once you’ve compiled all the information you can from relatives and home sources, then you can move on to other resources such as websites and historical records,” she said. For Ross Gridley, of Hamlin, his introduction to his family history came when his brother began working on their genealogy about 15 years ago. “My brother started it out of curiosity,” Gridley explained. His brother, Gridley said, also had access to one of the larger genealogical libraries run by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “When he passed away I started doing local research. I have more than 1,000 names that I haven’t connected to anyone yet. There are some people who are related either by birth or marriage that I haven’t been able to connect.” Ed Maas of Spencerport decided to begin tracing his ancestry when he was recently stricken with an illness. “My daughters asked me to bring our family history up to date,” Maas said. It was natural curiosity and a desire to make certain that everyone in her family was remembered as having been a part of the family that led Mary Eichas-Gavigan of Hilton to begin researching her family history in 1972. “Being Catholic and knowing that I had 13 brothers and sisters but sometimes when my mother talked she only mentioned 11 of us -- that’s what made me want to begin researching,” Eichas-Gavigan said. What she discovered in talking with her mother is that there were two children who died at very young ages and one of the ways her mother grieved was to put them out of her mind. “But for me, they are part of my history and they have a place in our family records so everyone is counted in the charts.” While family gossip and hearsay may be interesting and can lead to lively family get-togethers, they don’t truly have a place in a family history other than sometimes as a memory prompt. But Eichas-Gavigan said that on occasion when she has heard a bit of gossip told three times she feels it is then time to begin doing some work to authenticate it if possible. “It’s up to the family genealogist to make certain that the facts are correct,” she said. The Internet has made researching a family history easier but, as with much of the information found on the Internet, it is only as factual or correct as the individual who inputs it. Eichas-Gavigan said that her family has records to show her mother came to the United Stated from Germany through Ellis Island in 1913, but there are still no records on the Ellis Island website that show she was one of the immigrants who landed there. Stacy agrees that the Internet has become a terrific resource for tracing family trees, and lots of people are using it for that purpose—including more than 90 percent of “Family Tree Magazine’s” readers. She said it’s helped make family history easier and more accessible in several ways: Through online bulletin boards, mailing lists and family tree databases, researchers can connect with distant relatives they never knew about. “In addition, the web gives people quicker and easier access to information. And now that more archives, libraries and commercial companies are digitizing historical records and putting them online, you can search in censuses or deeds or county histories from home—you don’t have to travel to the facility that has them,” she explained. That said, it’s important for people to know that you can’t find your entire family history online. It’s not as easy as going to a website and downloading a family tree back to the Middle Ages. Online historical records represent only a fraction of what’s in archives, libraries and courthouses, as well as what’s been microfilmed by the National Archives and Family History Library in Salt Lake City (operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). In addition, Stacy cautioned, most transcribed, or “electronically re-created,” records and family tree files in online databases haven’t been verified by anyone—and just like any “secondary” source, they’re prone to human error. People should use those as starting points, not as a source for absolute answers. Fascinating family members Another interesting ancestor to have popped up on the Gridley’s family tree was Reuel Colt Gridley, “The Auction Man” (January 23, 1829 to November 24, 1870). Missouri native Reuel served in the Mexican War before heading to California to work as a miner, newspaperman, banker and auctioneer, among many other professions. In April 1864, in order to pay off a bet he had won on a local election, Reuel carried a 50 pound sack of flour through town accompanied by a brass band. Later, while celebrating in a local tavern, Reuel came up with the idea of auctioning off the sack of flour for the benefit of the U.S. Sanitary Commission to help wounded soldiers. His great inspiration was that each successful bidder would return the same sack of flour, enabling it to be auctioned off again and again. In essence, bidders were simply competing for the privilege of donating money to the cause. By the end of the day, Gridley had raised $3,500 from the local miners. Buoyed by his success, Gridley took his sack of flour to silver towns throughout western Nevada, raising more than $20,000 before moving on to California. Gridley traveled around auctioning the same sack for five months; at the end of that time he had raised around $150,000. His success gained him recognition all over the country, and the Sanitary Commission urged him to come east. Carrying his sack of flour, Gridley arrived in New York City in January 1865 and crisscrossed the north until the end of the war. The sack of flour was sold for the last time at the Sanitary Fair at St. Louis, MO, in April 1865. According to other stories Gridley has come across about his ancestor, Reuel also had a run in with Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and pushed him into a creek where Reuel had been fishing. Two workmen came across the boys and hauled Clemens out of the water. Twain later wrote about Reuel Gridley’s exploits in his 1872 book Roughing It. And in 1876, Stockton veterans sold thousands of miniature sacks of flour to raise money for a monument to Gridley. Why take the time to research? Eichas-Gavigan said, “Working on genealogy is like shaking hands with relatives you haven’t seen for a long time and once you find out about them and place them on the tree you see it’s a work in progress that will never be completed.” Researching a family connection is more than learning about common last names. It is about sometimes discovering skills, mannerisms, and character traits that are the same through the generations. “Then there is the medical history, repeat diseases, illness and even death that are a part of every family,” Eichas-Gavigan said. Maas said that one of his great-great-grandmothers saw President Abraham Lincoln on one of his travels. Additionally, Maas said, his grandfather from six or seven generations ago was given land in the town now known as Richville, NY. That grandfather was Samuel Rich and his house still stands as one of the landmarks in that town. More than 33 million Americans are interested in family history, but there’s often a precipitating event or factor that leads them to act on their curiosity, according to Stacy. “Sometimes, it’s the death of a parent or other relative. It leads them to want to preserve their loved one’s memory,” she said. “Or they might inherit family papers and memorabilia that tells about relatives they didn’t know, and that sparks them to start investigating who those people were and how they fit into the family tree.” For other people, the desire to research a family history comes from wanting to know more about themselves, where they come from and to have a legacy to pass on to their children. “People might see an article on genealogy or stumble across a family history website, start doing a little digging—and once they start discovering things about their family’s pasts, they’re hooked,” Stacy said. How far back do you go? “There will always be another set of parents to trace or another family member who might have gotten missed,” Eichas-Gavigan said. Gridley has also had a great-grandfather on his mother’s side who served in the Civil War as a drummer boy. “One of my third great granduncles settled in Ogden in 1816. He was one of the first settlers and his brother was a surgeon during the War of 1812 before moving to Pennsylvania to work as the town doctor.” Maas said his father, Raymond, was a first generation German who was born in the United States. Eichas-Gavigan has traced her family tree back to p1748 to her husband’s great-great-great-great grandfather who served in the Revolutionary War in 1776. She has also unearthed information about a woman named Eleanor VanGorton that dates back to 1648 – nine generations before her husband’s birth. As for her side of the family, Eichas-Gavigan said her father, George B. Eichas, was born in 1891 in a part of a township of Irondequoit and that township didn’t require birth certificates to be filed so his birth was recorded on his baptismal records. Where to go to get started The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints website for genealogical research: www.familysearch.org. |
