To my great grandaughter - The glass ceiling has been broken; the sky is the limit!

On June 24, I became a great-grandmother. I felt so lucky and so blessed that I was able to see the beginning of a new generation in my family. It was a rather strange feeling. It felt like a new beginning in my life and I couldn't stop smiling. As a mother in labor, you pray to see your child born. At that moment when you see your child, you see the next generation but you don't think about that. 

You don't think about generations to come, even if you are a genealogist.

And it takes years before you start to think about the possibility of grandchildren. Some moms don't want that day to come. They will be perceived as old. Some can't wait, regardless of their age. And there are ways to get around the problem of being called grandmother. You can make up a name like nana, mawma, and a hundred other things I have heard. But when the fog of birth disappears you are still grandma.

It is crazy but I don't have any friends who object to being called great-grandmother. It is like a badge of honor. 

A few days after my great-granddaughter was born I was getting ready to meet up with friends at a local Mexican restaurant. I caught my reflection in the mirror. I sure didn't look like a great grandmother. As I drove down Crissy Road on my way to Loma Lindas I thought about my own great grandmothers. Should I look like them? No way! And then I started thinking about all the differences between all of us.

All of my great grandmothers wore long skirts. The had long hair. And they were all different. One was a pioneer in the Great Black Swamp. Another immigrated from Prussia. Yet another was an abolitionist and had three sons who made it home from the Civil War. The last died young and never got to see her young children live to adulthood, let alone see her own grandchildren.

And here I was off to celebrate with the girls (other grandmothers) at the local Mexican Restaurant. No horse and buggy. No restrictions. No one looking down their noses at us. 

If we wanted to we could party like it is 1999. I doubt that Grandma Perkins or Grandma Rochte could have partied like it was 1899. Although from what i have heard Grandma Rochte might have tried. She was a neat lady. 

My great grandmothers did not have the right to vote. But my great granddaughter has the right to be President of the United States of America.

End of discussion.  

 

Who Do You Think You Are off to a good start in the new season!

The new season of Who Do You Think You Are is off to a good start. I did play the Bingo game and filled many of the squares, but not 5 in a row. There are squares that you can absolutely count on -  "researcher uses ancestry.com", "celebrities says they are traveling to ....", and my personal favorite "there is an open parking space in front of the archive". If you have never played this, you need to get your WDYTYA bingo card. http://www.geneabloggers.com/bingo-card-tonights-premiere/

Before I watched the new season premiere, I watched a couple of former episodes, Bryan Cranston and JK Rowlings. They were similar in the sense that they illustrated how families seem to follow patterns. In Bryan's case the men deserted their families. In JK's family the women were single mothers. As Bryan Cranston put it, the men in his family "were born with suitcases in their hands." In Rowlings case, her 2X great grandmother successfully overcame many obstacles in her life, as did Rowlings herself. Think Harry Potter!

Is there something in the family DNA or do they just pass habits from branch to branch on the family tree. Probably a little bit of both. When you really start looking into the "dash" of a person's life you can get a feeling for the family values that are passed from generation to generation. Or not!

I found that I related to JK Rowlings more because her family, as well as a branch of mine, was from the Alsace Lorraine area. I also picked up an important bit of information that applied to my own research and might help me understand why my grandmother's family left Prussia. This is a perk of this show - getting a hint, or as Ancestry likes to call it - a leaf.

In the first episode of the new season, Aisha Tyler, discovered the dash of her 2X great grandfather. When she first found him in the census records he was a 5 year old living in a boarding house. He came to Oberlin, Ohio, with his mother and brother, who eventually died, leaving him alone. He was more than likely born a slave. Records indicate that his father, John Hancock, a Congressman and white supremacist watched over him and his family to a certain extent. 

This was finally a life story of someone who overcame his beginnings and his father's lack of values. Hugh Berry Hancock eventually became a Republican delegate to the convention that nominated McKinley for President. And his home is now a historical landmark in Texas. Aisha must be very proud.

These three episodes of WDYTYA illustrate how good and bad is passed along the family tree. The mysteries, the folk lore, the traditions, the habits. Have you ever looked at a picture of an ancestor and seen yourself? And then, wondered - am I like that person or do I just look like her?