Family Tree 4-H Project: Confessions of a High School Genealogist

As a high school student, I researched my family tree as part of a genealogy 4-H project. I found the process fascinating, like being in a mystery novel. For a girl who never knew her own grandparents, looking up my family history helped me connect with my own family and heritage.

Now, this research was taking place in the ancient days of the early 1990's, before the onset of online resources like Geni and the like. So I had to do things the old fashioned way. The first place I started was my parents. Although Dad didn't keep track of his brothers after their parents died (we think they're still alive somewhere), his father's memories were literally all over the house - our dining room table, coffee table and various other pieces of furniture were all products of Grandpa's carpentry. Mom's knowledge for her family is nearly as complete as the scraps of memorabilia she had collected. We spent long afternoons pouring through old boxes, finding yellowed newspaper articles about how her father had helped someone rebuild a barn after it burned, digging out programs for her siblings' weddings, etc. Her older sister, my Aunt Sharlene, had also documented their side of the family back to the 18^th century. It was here that I started learning the language of genealogy. It wasn't April 4, 1979; it was 4 April 1979. Last names were surnames, and always written in all caps.

After I exhausted my parents, it was time for the real detective work to begin. Fortunately, for at least the most recent generations, my family hadn't moved around much. This meant that I could drive to courthouses to get birth and death certificates (when they hadn't been destroyed by fire decades past). I also drove to cemeteries to document gravesites and to old homesteads for pictures.

I was lucky in that my family tree is relatively straightforward. People being adopted, divorces, and estrangements all make genealogy more tricky (and more fun, depending on your perspective), and my mom's side was relatively devoid of such hurdles. My dad's side, however, proved more difficult. My great-grandfather on his side immigrated to the States from the Netherlands in the 1860s, and although the Dutch keep excellent genealogical records, they are, in fact, in Dutch. The surname that is so rare in the States is actually quite common in the Netherlands, and it was there that my genealogical quest came to a grinding halt, for that branch of the tree.