As excited as I had been on my first day of enumerating, I was completely blown away when I set eyes on my first Census form from 1930. There it was, in black and white, right there on my monitor: my grandfather Frank Gulick, my grandmother Susan, and my three uncles. My father wouldn't be born for another eight years. I was transported back into time - specifically 1930. I could almost smell the paper and feel the pen scratches and ink welts of a time in which I’d not lived.
Later I would find people in my family whom I'd never met. I would find others whom I'd heard so much about. And in the true spirit of keeping personal information a secret, but only for 72 years, I found out where my long lost great-aunt Odessa had really gone to when she became pregnant - and it wasn't with "that boy" as I'd been told. It was with "that man." That man was my great-aunt's father, James Lambert. He was my great-grandfather, my mother's grandfather, and my great-grandmother's ex-husband.
I would come to discover, and it was later confirmed, that my great-aunt hadn't been pregnant at all. She just couldn't stand her mother, Effie Mae (nee Felker), any more, so she left and changed her name. Incorrectly listed (or incorrectly told to the enumerator) as James' stepdaughter, Odessa was James' daughter. My great-grandfather had moved to a different state and took his oldest daughter with him. He remarried and had several more children. My great-grandmother would also remarry - three times.
Incidentally, my great-grandmother was a horrid woman. I still question the motivation of a man who spirits away his eldest daughter (leaving sons and a younger daughter behind), but if great-grandma was as mean at 25 as she was at 75, I would have bid my farewells, too. The younger daughter, my grandmother, Mildred, who was no kind person herself, once told me her grandmother was "a witch." Try passing genealogy off at an Anger Management Class and see how far it flies. Er, not that I would know.
Article comments
1 - Robin
Fabulous! As a professional researcher, I can honestly say this nails the beginner's feelings and experience perfectly. The excitement (and occasional horror) of finding oneself through roots is a journey more should undertake.
You never realize how far you've really come until you see how far you go back.
Excellent job!