Monday, December 3, 2012
Serendipity
I am very interested in tracing my family tree. It turns out, my father's family had a pretty interesting American background. One part came over with William Penn, and the Myers line served in the Revolutionary War. My dad's great-grandfather was a prosperous mill owner, so much so that there is a school named after him in Cheltenham PA. Pretty cool. I have been looking for information about him and his wife, Jane, to no avail. Yesterday, on a whim, I googled the school to see if I could find a picture of the front of the school to add to my FB page. No luck but what I DID find was the site "Find-a- grave" I went there and Lo and behold found someone had posted a small bio of Benjamin and Jane MCCABE Myers. Wow. I had been looking for her maiden name for ages and just tripped across her. One more piece of the puzzle fitted! Now I have to find Charles Parvin's wife Elizabeth and I will have gotten all of that side complete in my mind. It's pretty cool to think of all of these people and what their lives were like. I love history when it is not dry facts but the story of people. I suppose I could use this information to file for membership in the DAR, an organization my mom thought was great, but I am not so sure. Funny, I don't think she ever knew about my dad's family history, I don't think he knew all that much either although he did tell me about the William Penn connection once in passing. I think if she had known, she might have encouraged me to apply. I don't know at this point if I should. Maybe I need to look into the organization to see if there is any compelling reason for me to pursue it.
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I have an interesting genealogy story too! I found a long-lost cousin on Thanksgiving this year. Here's what happened: Before Thanksgiving I was making some vague plans to drive to Hawthorne to buy a Chromebook from my son-in-law, Ivan. I got to thinking it would be fun to drive by the house my grandma and grandpa Abel (my mom's parents) lived in, but I had no idea where it was. They moved around a lot and only lived there for a few years in the 1960's. So I asked my dad, and he didn't exactly remember but got out a map and studied it for awhile, then circled a spot where he thought they lived. I tried looking at it with Google Street View but it seems the camera car hadn't been down that street. Looking at Google maps, it didn't seem quite right, but I just wasn't sure. I thought maybe I could find some old property records on Google, so I entered their names with the word "Hawthorne" at the end of the search string. I didn't find what I was looking for (they were probably renters anyway) but I did find a post from 2001 on Ancestry.com by a lady looking to contact any descendents of my grandparents! What a surprise. I had never been on Ancestry.com before, but I created an account in order to reply to her post and leave my email address, and she promptly replied. Long story short, one of my mother's cousins was actually my grandmother's daughter, and the lady I contacted is the granddaughter of that daughter; hence, my half cousin once removed. We've been chatting ever since and last week I mailed her some pictures to look at and scan.
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