Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don’t even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges. ~Annie Lennox
I’m not sure what Ms. Lennox meant by “essential to our every waking moment,” but she is absolutely correct that we don’t know much about their lives. I know a little about 19th-century living, in general, but not much about my people, and lately I have become curious. When my daughter gave me an Ancestry.com subscription, I was thrilled beyond measure. At last. This will be so easy. Not so much.
(Many thanks to my cousins Darlynn and Clarice for passing along photos and names I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The featured image above is the Gibson family, back when Daddy was knee-high to a grasshopper. He is, I think, second from left on the ground.)
The forebears are in the details
A close relative (one I regularly reference, if you’re keeping score) enjoys mocking me for what he would say is an extreme and unmerited concern for spelling accuracy. While I concede he has a point in some [rare] cases, variations in name spellings can present headaches. There is no doubt that my family on both sides has some interesting names. Further, our verbal communication is riddled with dropped syllables, questionable vowel enunciation, and inconsistencies in references to family members. Is that Norman, Norm, or Norman Wayne? All the same guy, by the way.
Big deal, you say. And you’d be right if the reason for calling Norm is to drag him into a watermelon rind fight in the front yard, circa 1955. But if you’re researching three or four generations back, you have no way of knowing whether Zenauda was Zenada, Naud, Nauda or something else. I am fortunate enough to have my Grandmother Gibson’s Bible, and that name is spelled two different ways in that one resource. Â
There’s that, and a birth record for one ancestor that reflected the year born as 1988 and year of death as 1964. Tricky, that. Obviously the birth certificate was a re-issue, and the clerk neglected to type the century correctly. Easy mistake, but it adds to the confusion.
So I should find a more concrete reference? Sure. Here’s my experience with that. We–my cousins and I–called my great-grandmother’s sister Aunt Marm. On her tombstone, which I saw with my own two eyes, her name is shown as Miriam. Close enough. But her actual name is Myrene. Who needs that kind of stress in their lives?
So why make the effort?
That’s certainly a question you can only answer for yourself. I am quite curious about what path my ancestors took when they came over from the United Kingdom. I have some DNA from Germany and Denmark, but I am primarily a product of the UK. I’d like to know where my great-great-greats landed, how they made their way down to the Carolinas, and why. Cheaper land? Better farming? Running from the law? My brother would subscribe to the latter. 😉
Seriously. what drove them to take that tedious, expensive, uncomfortable crossing? Think about it. In the 1700s, that would take 6-10 weeks. No Bistro Cafe in that kind of watercraft. BYOF and BYOB. They really wanted to make a change if they went to that kind of trouble, so we know they were strong-willed people. What were they expecting to find, and did they find it? And, yes, I know that in a 2022 post I said their lives might be too sad to explore, but I suspect that particular history deserves unearthing, anyway.
Some of my antecedents were preachers, some blacksmiths, and others were sharecroppers. I have been told, but haven’t researched that far back yet, that at one time the Gibsons in the Carolinas were well-to-do. So I’m also wondering what went south for them, as it were. Because Daddy’s folks would never have been labeled well-to-do by any stretch of the imagination.
I just want to know.
The website is fairly straightforward and contains powerful search engines. The latter is both a help and a hindrance, depending on how well you know how to ask for what you want. If you don’t narrow your search effectively, you get 17,247 hits, and good luck finding Aunt Marm (or Aunt Miriam or whatever her real name was) in that pile of data. Fortunately, Aunt Sarah on Mother’s side of the tree did significant work on this before she died, so I have a leg up there. As a plus, she was quite conscientious, so I am hopeful when I jump to a different set of branches, I’ll not only get a headstart but also have smoother sailing. Time will tell.
Here’s the thing: time is of the essence. If this type of inquiry interests you at all, grab the people who are still around and who might still remember ANYTHING. Ask them all the questions you can think of and write down whatever they’re willing to share. Even if their memory isn’t clear–whose is?–you’ll have a thread to pull. And don’t wait. Tomorrow isn’t promised. Not for you, not for me, and not for them.
I enjoyed this! My father traced our family tree back several generations, updated with new additions to the family and gave my siblings and I all a copy. I treasure it!
You’re lucky to have a head start. I am learning it can be incredibly difficult to figure out who fits on the tree and who’s just a name that sounds right.
Enjoyed the piece. Brings to mind a Randy Travis song, “Diggin Up Bones” exhumin’ up things better left alone. I had heard about the short period of time the Gibson’s actually had a little money. I think it was that bank robbery in Charlotte that brought them to West Tennessee. Dad took me to see some of the shacks he lived in as a kid, all dirt floor and small. We know mother was raised with 3 siblings and a mother in 600 sq. feet with no running water. Our family was the first generation not to be share croppers….which is about the same as slaves. I find our ancestry depressing but it did inspire me to swear off poverty at a relative early age.
Once again our perspective is quite different. Neither of us know yet where we started. Could be less depressing than you imagine.