I have been working on my family's history regularly for the past 5 or so years. Ancestry.com is a terrific tool! I am able to spend nights searching for records, and I've had quite a few 'Eureka' moments.
For instance, I was surprised to learn that on my maternal Grandfather's side, we could trace back to the 1200s. Some members of my family have been in the US since the 1600s- I haven't found that any came over on the Mayflower, but they were here. We were in the US before it WAS the USA. I was more surprised to see that most of the 'old names' in my hometown are related to us. Most of the people who were our neighbors when I was a kid, are distant cousins. That made my hometown a little more special to me.
Then on Dad's side- I found out that most of the people I always thought were family friends, were actually family AND friends. You know- family members that you actually like being around. My grandmother's friend Evy; who with her husband Marsh were at all the family functions (including my parents wedding, and mine, and my sister's baby shower), is actually my grandmother's first cousin.
The roots of my family run very deep in Rensselaer County. When I go home now, I tend to look at it from their perspective- in 2010 it remains a very rural area. I like to imagine what these hills and mountains were like to live in 200 years ago. Fortunately for ancestry purposes, the family didn't move much. Not so great for the gene pool (haha!). But they are easier to trace in census data, because they lived in the same area most of their lives.
So I was very surprised when going through the boxes of documents my aunt sent me in the fall of 2008, after my Grandmother passed away. There were various pieces of paper on which different ancestors wrote their lineage. What a gift! One piece had the name of my great-great grandmother, and it said she was born in 1850 in Blackriver, Lorain County, OH. OHIO???? I knew that she and my great-great grandfather, Leonard Lewis, lived in Berlin, NY; my hometown. She is buried in the cemetery by what is now the elementary school, but was the high school when my mom graduated. Her stone is one that we put flowers on every year for Memorial Day. To find out that she had been born somewhere else was baffling, but to find out that it was Ohio, which is where I now live, was intriguing.
I have been spending the past few nights working on Phebe's side of the family- entering her parents and siblings based on the information written down by some ancestor. Perhaps it was her daughter, Mabel, my great-grandmother. Or maybe it was my Grandpa. I'm not really sure who wrote the lineage on the two pages of writing paper-written on the front and back in pencil. I think Phebe's parents were born in NY, and some of her siblings were born in NY, but some were born in Ohio. So I wonder what took the family from extreme eastern NY to the Cleveland area? How did they get there and back? Well, no doubt covered wagon- not like they had cars back then. The trip today would take what, 8 hours? Yeah, 7-8 hours by car. Most of that is on the interstate. So it's not like it's just a hop, skip, and a jump. I cannot imagine how long it took 160 years ago. Weeks, probably.
I don't know if I will ever find out what brought the Van Wert family from NY to OH and back. But I do think it's an interesting mystery, and one I am certainly going to look into.
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