I think my experience with genealogy aptly describes how everyone's lives touch one another, including those of our ancestors. For example, a woman, Juanita Askew, who apparently is not related, sent me an email today providing all sorts of information about an ancestor who has eluded my research. And she gave me the name of a contact, a woman named Nancy Attey who is researching my Eskew line in Blount County, Alabama. So my great, great grandmother Mary Tabitha Eskew has provided a common point for three people today.
I was so thrilled to get the email that I quickly jotted off a letter to Nancy. Each new contact I find for each family line is similarly exciting and each family line stirs up not only ancient memories, but memories about the first contact with someone who was able to break whatever barrier I had faced in research, and the first time I found a picture and gazed upon the face of my ancestor. These contacts have sometimes resulted in good friendships, or at least ongoing dialogues with distant cousins.
The most pronounced example is when my father's cousin Wayne Littlefield, a repository of family history for the Littlefields and Adams, several years ago started sending the information to my father. My dad promptly forwarded the information to me and eventually Wayne and I made contact. Just a few weeks ago my mom and I stopped in Tyler to meet Wayne and his wife Esther. I doubt there are few people in this world who are as kind as this couple. And we have forged a lasting friendship.
I have met many kind people who have shared their information with me and I have tried on my part to do the same, all in this quest to discover a world we believe we can only know by looking at it through the eyes of our ancestors. I yearn to tell their stories even though the facts are sketchy and the best stories are long cold and buried. However, there are stories in the discovery as well.
Take the example of my ancestor Betty Braddock Brown. Her husband Nathan is buried at Colony Cemetery where my earliest Brown immigrant, Samuel Jenkins Brown, to Texas and most of his descendants are buried. Nathan is buried in the close family plot with his son's family, his grandson's family, and eventually his great-grandson's family, my father. Needless to say, since I was a baby, my family would visit this plot and my Brown ancestors were well-known to me. But Nathan's wife was not there. There is an empty space beside Nathan.
I have been researching my family history since I was about ten-years-old. It wasn't until I was in high school in the early 1980s, and I had enough spending money to start sending for copies of birth and death certificates, that I secured a copy of an important death certificate. It indicated that the wife of Nathan was named Betty Braddock. Finally I had a name. It wasn't until three years ago, 1996, that my mom and I discoveredher grave at Pine Springs Cemetery, in the same county as Colony. Finding her grave, however, opened up many more questions than it answered. She died in 1886 at the early age of 30 (my age now, gulp). On the tombstone was carved the image of a woman in a long dress holding a baby to her shoulder. Further, the name of a baby girl and "infant" were listed below Betty's name. What had happened in 1886 to this family? Why wasn't Betty and her family buried with Nathan? Betty's story was more tragic than we could have imagined. But that's a story for another day.