Memories

Thanksgiving 2008 is over. We ate turkey at Mom's house. It was a traditional Thanksgiving with the turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie and more. Nobody asked if they had Mayflower ancestry. Mom would have had little time to eat telling them about their ancestors and naming off all that came within a few years after the landing of the Mayflower.

While the Friday after was Black Friday for some, it is traditionally the Nebraska football game for us. And what a game it was this year when they won over Colorado. I can remember going to the stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska the day after Thanksgiving to attend the game. I would go with my Dad, my Grandpa and my brother. Earlier games my parents would take my brother and me to the game. Mom would longingly look at the Nebraska State Historical Society which is on campus and wish she could have a few minutes there. As the game became more interesting, she soon forgot about her genealogy.

In September 1995 Mom was in Salt Lake City doing research. Dad called her about his tickets to the Nebraska football game that weekend in Lincoln. Mom dropped everything and came home. She got off the plane, went home and repacked her luggage and they hopped in the car for the game. I would say at times Husker football is almost as high on her list as genealogy!

Mom is trying to figure out how many shoes she can pack and how many research notes and books she can cram into her carry on and big suitcases for holiday trip to Virginia. She will be leaving in a little more than two weeks to spend Christmas in Virginia with my brother. I am sure she'll find libraries, bookstores and cemeteries. They will be spending Christmas week in a mountain cabin in Virginia. I am not sure how Mom will survive without e-mail and Internet. That's why she needs to take fewer clothes (can always wash) and more books.

She also hopes to meet up with a genealogy friend in Washington, DC before coming home. They will talk non-stop genealogy (that's a strange language in case you have never heard it). I am sure she'll return with new information and also great memories of how Christmas 2008 was spent in the mountains.

Girls

I have written about my Mom and my Aunt Cheri ... the You Go Genealogy Girls. They aren't exactly girls. Mom has two grandchildren, my 20 year old and my 10 year old. Aunt Cheri has seven grandchildren and one on the way will be number eight. They all are in the same family. She sometimes thinks she's a "real" granny. Whatever that means!

Aunt Cheri recently suggested that they should be renamed You Go Genealogy Grannies. I don't know if that's appropriate either. I wouldn't want to slow them down thinking they are "old" grannies. They really GO, not only physically but mentally. Nothing stops them from pursuing their genealogy.

Mom will visit Aunt Cheri later this week. She is giving her two days to recover from her genealogical research trip to Wyoming. They plan on sitting up their laptops and going non-stop for several days in preparation for their spring trip to Salt Lake City. One thing about them, they don't procrastinate until the last minute.

This month Mom will finish teaching her genealogy class at the local college. She'll also get things ready for the program of the local genealogy society. Sometime along the way, she'll make some plans for Thanksgiving. It's a good thing she keeps a calendar to keep things straight.

I'm not sure about the next journey of the You Go Genealogy Girls. There's a few months between now and May, so who knows where they will end up and what they will be doing. Now I've decided...they are so young at heart, I'm going to continue calling them girls instead of grannies.

The You Go Genealogy Girls

They are at it again, planning more research trips. They should be planning Thanksgiving and Christmas, instead they are already looking to spring when they will take off on a big trip.

In case you don't know the You Go Genealogy Girls, they are my Mom and Aunt Cheri. They both speak nothing but genealogy-talk. And they really aren't girls. The are grandmothers, but don't tell them they aren't girls. Sometimes they giggle and act like teenagers.

Their big trip 2009 will be to Salt Lake City to use the Family History Library. It will be Aunt Cheri's first trip there. Mom thinks it might be scary just taking her there. The problem is apparently on how to get there. There are various options.

At first they thought about going on Amtrak. That would mean Aunt Cheri driving to Mom's house and then me taking the "two girls" about 70 miles south of here in the middle of the night to get on the train. Same for return home. They both agreed, given their age and night time habits, it would be best to have a sleeping room with toilet and sink. After all, who wants to see an old granny wandering around a train the the middle of the night looking for a toilet?

The next obstacle is that such a sleeping room on Amtrak has a lower and upper sleeping compartment. Now the squabble is on as to which one has to climb the ladder to the top bed. That shows their age! They were delighted to learn that they would have a table that they could set up their laptop computers. Another squabble. Mom uses a Mac and Aunt Cheri uses a PC. While they don't work on the same genealogy, they occasionally compare notes and one wonders why she can't get something to work on her laptop that does on the other.

They are now thinking about driving to Salt Lake City. They will go to my cousin's house in Cheyenne and after visiting him and resting up at least one night, they will go to Salt Lake City. That means they will wait until at least mid-May so the mountain passes in Wyoming are clear. They now think this would be fun as they could stop as they want, they could possibly extend that one week trip on Amtrak to just a little bit more, as long as they still have some money. Coming home, they might even go somewhere else...who knows they might end up in Denver. One reason Aunt Cheri wants Mom to drive them there is because she can load the car with everything imaginable and buy to her heart's content.

When it comes to the You Go Genealogy Girls, anything goes. They dream in living color and compare notes on genealogy and trips by phone and e-mail. It's nice that older people can have so much fun!

Mum is Home

My Mom has been traveling most of August. Her latest trip was with my brother to London. That's as in England! It was her first trip there and his one of many. She said her first experience was going through immigration when the man referred to her as my brother's Mum. Otherwise she was pretty much known in London and England as Madam. I never think of my Mom in terms of either Mum or Madam!

What did my Mum enjoy most about the trip? Cemeteries, cemeteries, cemeteries! She doesn't seem to deviate. She would walk miles to get to a cemetery. The first she visited was Highgate Cemetery (west) where she took a tour. She had walked a long ways to get there and soon realized the tour would be a breeze. The elderly man guiding them was slightly overweight and winded, giving her adequate time to snap photographs.

On her trip to Salisbury and Stonehenge she said the coach would not stop at all the quaint Norman churches so she could walk the cemeteries. That means Mum will have to go back some day.

She said the best part of visiting St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminsters Abbey was exploring the crypts. That's my Mum!

The day before she left to fly home, she informed my brother that she was taking her own personal tour by herself in the Brompton Cemetery. Off she went on the tube in search ofa cemetery. Mom was snapping a photograph of tombstones when a man approached her saying to not trip over the squirrels. there were squirrels around her feet in search of food.

I am sure she is still dreaming of London, riding the tube, old cemeteries and crypts and trying to calculate how long she has to wait for trip number two. That's my Mum!

House and home genealogy

Some people live in the same house all their life. Others, like me and my family, have moved a good deal. We never seem to forget the houses that we call home. I am so glad that Mom took photographs of all the houses that my brother and I grew up in.

Mom, the genealogist, recently prepared a Google map showing the towns where she has lived. She could attach photographs of the houses, but I am not sure she has done that. This is a great way to show others, particularly grandchildren, where you lived.

Generations ago our relatives and ancestors did not document their houses with photographs. I think it would be fun to prepare a family tree of the houses. Mom has two houses carved by a wood-artist in Pennsylvania. They are of her grandparents' log cabin and her great grandparents' house in North Carolina. The wood carvings are about 5 inches by 3 inches in size. They are painted realistically. I can remember my great grandparents' log cabin. It is still standing and in the family, though not lived in. The other house was gone long before I was born. There is also a story that Mom tells about the two little houses standing side by side on her desk.

When she was about fifteen years old she discovered her Granny's love letters. They were neatly tied together with blue ribbons. Reading some of them she also discovered that her grandparents had planned on eloping. Granny's father , a minister who lived in the beautiful, white house in North Carolina, was not in favor of a marriage. He told her she would never have a nice house to live in if they married. Comparing the two houses on Mom's desk, maybe he was right. The white house was very nice. However, we all loved the log cabin. It was full of love and stories and get togethers with relatives. It definitely was home!

Several years ago Mom located the Victorian house where her father lived in South Dakota. She was told that it was being demolished for a business. Mom took photographs of it from every angle. Dad tormented her that she didn't need all of those photographs. They are all that are left the house that once was my grandfather's home.

Recently Mom and Aunt Cheri discovered the falling-down house that belonged to Aunt Cheri's great great grandparents. There are holes in the wall, a sunken in roof and crumbling fire place. It is hard to imagine people living there, but I am sure it was home and they were proud of it.

A house is a house, a roof over your head. A home is what you make it....love, satisfaction, along with good and bad memories.

Genealogically Weathering a Storm

Last night in a display of lightening fireworks, thunder, high winds, rain and hail, a big tree in my drive came tumbling down. Had I not moved my car a few minutes earlier, it would have been crushed. Buildings around town sustained damage and trees are uprooted and broken.

The local newspaper features a photograph of trees uprooted in the cemetery. I am sure Mom will be checking on that early this morning. Mom and I kept a constant phone chatter going last night to make sure we were okay. She reported her wicker furniture blew into the bushes, but everything else appeared to be okay.

At one point Mom said she was shutting her computer down. I was certain she would probably grab her external hard drive full of genealogy information and head to the closet. She reports that she didn't even grab a genealogy book and head to her favorite chair. Mom is slipping! In fact she cleaned up her kitchen, started the dishwasher and left her pan of left over enchiladas on the kitchen counter. That's total preoccupation with the storm.

Looking back at storms we had so frequently here in Nebraska, I don't remember Mom ever putting genealogy before her family. She grabbed us first to run to the basement or crawl space (yucky place to weather a storm). I am sure all the while her mind was on what would happen to all of her years of research, the documents and the photographs.

One of Mom's most vivid memories is about being in a flood in Greeley, Colorado. She was about four years old, but sill remembers the family possessions floating away. Those included trunks of old photographs, At the time she just knew they belonged to the family. As the flood water was going over her head, an older cousin handed her the end of a broom and told her to hang on while he pulled her toward him. The family photographs were gone, but Mom was saved.

Mom always says the lives of our ancestors are important, but the family today are more important. Given the choice, she'd always come to our rescue. That's why I love my genealogy Mom!

Genealogy Spare Time

What do genealogists do in their spare time? They still do genealogy! I know that because my Mom is a genealogist.

Whenever Mom had a spare moment she was doing or thinking genealogy. She was always at our softball games, baseball games and swimming lessons. She always had a book with her. That book was almost always something pertaining to genealogy. If there was a moment that she could read a few lines or a paragraph or even a page and chapter, she did it.

The books were always ready at a moment's notice for her to grab. Sometimes she would stash them in the car or in her purse. We never went to the doctor's office but what she had a genealogy book with her.

Mom says back in those days (1970s and 1980s) there were not as many genealogy magazines or periodicals. One that she subscribed to and looked forward to receiving was The Genealogical Helper. It's been around a long time...long before Mom got into genealogy. She always knew when it was due to arrive in the mail box and it had better arrive then or she was pacing the floor and ready to have words with the mail carrier.

When I was about fourteen years old we went to Hawaii for almost two weeks. I slept most of the way there. Mom read. The Genealogical Helper arrived (miraculously) the day before we left. By the time we landed in Honolulu, Mom had the entire magazine read. I can remember Dad saying, "Now what are you going to do?" Mom just grinned and I new she had plenty of reading material stashed in her luggage.

Those were the days when there were no restrictions on carry on luggage as far as weight and dimension. When we were at the airport to leave Honolulu, Mom and I had to take our carry on bags through inspection. They were looking for flowers and plants and fruit. They found books! I had my school books, which I did not want to take. Mom had her genealogy books. The inspector looked rather surprised and said normally people do not bring bags of books to Hawaii let alone return with them. He didn't find a single plant, flower or fruit...just books.

Mom read her genealogy books in the car while Dad drove. She said once she would get engrossed in what she was reading, Dad would start speeding. It was a thrill to him to speed and try to avoid getting caught. That usually didn't happen. Her reading would be interrupted by the sound of sirens and red lights flashing behind them.
Even though Mom does her own driving now, I know she carries plenty of genealogy books and magazines. There's always some time in the day that she calls her spare time to read.

Grandma's House

Some of my fondest memories are going to Grandma's house. I had two grandmothers that we would visit and for a while they both lived in the same town. Both of my grandmothers were great cooks. My paternal grandmother never seemed to mind as more and more relatives would show up to eat. She loved preparing big meals and seeing how many she could actually pack into the house. We ate in every place imaginable in the house! The toy box for the grandchildren was in the closet that went between bedrooms....a great place to hide out.

My maternal grandmother loved to garden and can her produce. She spent hours laboring over a hot stove and all of us dreamed of winter days when we could break open a new jar of jam or her dill pickles. She also was an artist. Her paintings were very good and she proudly displayed them, actually taking prizes in the county fair.

Because Mom was the family genealogist (still is), my maternal grandmother was always on the look out for a new cemetery we could explore. I can remember her taking us to cemeteries, grinning from ear to ear with her big straw hat protecting her from the sun. As she grew older and more crippled, she still loved to go with Mom to courthouses and cemeteries. Many times she was forced to stay in the car while Mom did the research.

This makes me wonder what my nine year old daughter will remember about going to Grandma's house. Mom lives in a new townhouse and she has it decorated nicely with antiques and family items as well as newer furniture. Tyrah loves to ask who owned that and who is in a photograph.

In Mom's genealogy-computer room the computer shares a spot with books and photos, some old and some new. The top of her book cases are decorated with a plate that belonged to my Dad's great, great grandmother, a black tea kettle that belonged to Mom's grandparents, an old black iron, Mom's grandmother's coffee grinder, old bottles (Mom dug some of them out of old privies) and photographs. On one wall she has photographs of her trip to the Outer Banks last year and proudly points out the island area where her ancestors lived in the early 1700s.

In her bedroom is a china doll sitting in the white wicker chair that was in my Dad's grandparents' house. In the master bathroom is a pitcher and basin that belonged to Mom's great grandparents. Her great grandmother's butter churn is in the living room, along with her quilted wall hangings representing family places that she and Dad frequented.

All of this represents my Mom and her love of family and genealogy. I grew up knowing about family and ancestors and relatives. Mom can recite names, dates, places for generations and knows exactly where to look for what record in the stash. She's a great walking history book. But more importantly when my daughter goes to Grandma's house she finds a grandmother that does things with her so she too will have memories.

Grandma's House

Some of my fondest memories are going to Grandma's house. I had two grandmothers that we would visit and for a while they both lived in the same town. Both of my grandmothers were great cooks. My paternal grandmother never seemed to mind as more and more relatives would show up to eat. She loved preparing big meals and seeing how many she could actually pack into the house. We ate in every place imaginable in the house! The toy box for the grandchildren was in the closet that went between bedrooms....a great place to hide out.

My maternal grandmother loved to garden and can her produce. She spent hours laboring over a hot stove and all of us dreamed of winter days when we could break open a new jar of jam or her dill pickles. She also was an artist. Her paintings were very good and she proudly displayed them, actually taking prizes in the county fair.

Because Mom was the family genealogist (still is), my maternal grandmother was always on the look out for a new cemetery we could explore. I can remember her taking us to cemeteries, grinning from ear to ear with her big straw hat protecting her from the sun. As she grew older and more crippled, she still loved to go with Mom to courthouses and cemeteries. Many times she was forced to stay in the car while Mom did the research.

This makes me wonder what my nine year old daughter will remember about going to Grandma's house. Mom lives in a new townhouse and she has it decorated nicely with antiques and family items as well as newer furniture. Tyrah loves to ask who owned that and who is in a photograph.

In Mom's genealogy-computer room the computer shares a spot with books and photos, some old and some new. The top of her book cases are decorated with a plate that belonged to my Dad's great, great grandmother, a black tea kettle that belonged to Mom's grandparents, an old black iron, Mom's grandmother's coffee grinder, old bottles (Mom dug some of them out of old privies) and photographs. On one was she has photographs of her trip to the Outer Banks last year and proudly points out the island area where her ancestors loves in the early 1700s.

In her bedroom is a china doll sitting in the white wicker chair that was in My Dad's grandparents' house. In the master bathroom is a pitcher and basin that belonged to Mom's great grandparents. Her great grandmother's butter churn is in the living room, along with her quilted wall hangings representing family places that she and Dad frequented.

All of this represents my Mom and her love of family and genealogy. I grew up knowing about family and ancestors and relatives. Mom can recite names, dates, places for generations and knows exactly where to look for what record in the stash. She's a great walking history book. But more importantly when my daughter goes to Grandma's house she finds a grandmother that does things with her so she too will have memories.

Making Memories

My daughter, Tyrah, and I have recently returned from a short trip to visit relatives. We stayed with Aunt Cheri and Uncle Geoff who opened their camper for us to sleep in. How much fun is that?

Mom, Aunt Cheri, Tyrah and I spent a day at the cemetery decorating graves. This was an opportunity to also explain to Tyrah about relatives, their names and what we knew about them. We decorated graves of grandparents, great grandparents, great, great, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and of course, my Dad's grave.

Since Mom left her witching sticks at home, she told me to break two coat hangers and make witching sticks for Tyrah. It didn't take long before Tyrah was wandering the cemetery witching for graves. Soon people were asking her what she was doing. She was proud when two people who tend to the cemetery asked her question about her witching sticks. It was comical seeing a nine year old instruct them on holding the sticks and show they go together for a male and apart for a female. I know Mom was proud of her also.

As we began decorating the graves of some great grandparents, Mom reminded us that Aunt Grace has a child born in about 1914 or 1915, buried in that location, sex unknown. Tyrah began witching and discovered where the child was buried and that it was a baby boy. Mom checked her "work" and had the same information. She made believers out of many people who took the sticks and did their own witching that day. As needed some wire to anchor flowers pots, I broke up both of her sticks. That brought on a serious pout and words from her. Aunt Cheri promised new and better witching sticks, which she made and gave Tyrah before we left.

While there we drove past the places where my grandparents had lived. The restored park fountain across from my paternal grandparents' house was a highlight of the trip. Seeing my daughter there brought back memories of when I was her age and would play in the park and watch the lights on the fountain at night. Now she has her own memories of visiting relatives, both alive and dead.

The Blue Van

When I was about nine years old my parents bought a van. It was one of those popular things that was the ultimate family vehicle, blue, with tinted windows. It was more than adequate to hold our luggage, us, plus a table for food and games. What more would we need?

The first trip we took was a long one. Those were the days when gas was cheap. Mom says they thought it was expensive, but in comparison with today's prices, it was cheap. The trip started at North Platte, Nebraska and was planned through Wyoming, Montana, northern Idaho and into Washington. From there, we drove the van across the border into Canada and on to a boat that took us to Victoria Island. Those were the days that you didn't need a passport to get into Canada. Security was pretty loose in those days.

After our jaunt in Canada, we drove to Oregon to visit relatives and then into Nevada. This meant we were heading toward home. Mom's eyes would light up at the prospect of driving through Utah. She calculated the miles and told Dad that it appeared we would HAVE to stay overnight in Salt Lake City.

When we began this trip, Dad proclaimed, "This is a family vacation." That actually meant no dead relatives welcome. Even with the capacity of the van, Mom left the genealogy behind. That's something she never did again when we traveled.

Sure enough we crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats and ended up in Salt Lake City, just in time to secure a motel as close as we could to Temple Square. Mom was to have the next day at the Family History Library. What Dad did not realize was that she had been calculating this all along, so had written notes from memory, families she wanted to check, locations of research and her list went on and on. Those dead relatives were lurking in the van on paper!

Checking into the motel, we unloaded the van and parked right outside the door of the room. About an hour later we went outside and discovered that somebody had stolen the cover off the spare tire on the rear of the van. That was Dad's favorite thing about the van. Had we not come to Salt Lake City in the quest of dead relatives, it would have never been stolen.

Mom had her day in the library and Dad had his day of entertaining us. He grumbled all the way home about the spare tire cover, but it was replaced once we returned home. From that day forward Mom knew that she must take genealogy to-do lists regardless of how much room we had when traveling. Within a year or so Dad announced he never did like that van because he had problems parking it and backing it up. Those were things Mom could easily do. Only took out the side of the garage once, but not with the Van. I think they sold it because of gas prices...they always tend to go up, you know!

A Message from Patrick

My nine year old daughter, Tyrah, is enthralled with anything Irish. We have no idea how this happened, but she was excited when her genealogist grandmother told her that she was Irish. Anything green brings a respinse of "Irish" from her. The other day my Mom mailed this letter to her. I think this is a great way to get young people interested in their family history. Genealogy Grandmothers can do something similar and spark that interest.


April 24th in the year of our Lord 2008

Good day wee one named Tyrah,

This is your great, great, great, great grandfather, Patrick Cosgrove decidin' to write you a letter, I am. I hear in a round about way from yer granny Ruby that you are interested in the Irish. As luck would have ye are Irish me lass.

You see, I was born on June 18th in the year of our Lord 1821 in Galway, Ireland. That's along the sea, just as beautiful as can be. But, I was not destined to remain out my life there. When I was a young man in me 20's there came a famine big as could be all over Ireland. Such ye never seen and I'd hope to never see again in me life time.

We Irish, me folks and all, raised potatoes as tenant farmers. Things were goin' along good until in September of the ear of our Lord 1845 when the potato plants just' up and turned black. The leaves curled up and rotted. There came some winds from England that carried that fungus all over the place and the blight did spread. Oh that blight just went all over and we all began to suffer from it. People were hungry and potatoes were our only crops to provide us a livin'.

The only thing we could do was go where we could live and work. Hearing about that great country known as America, I decided to leave me folks and cross the ocean. Oh it was a long trip over those stormy seas. The boat tossed that turned, but I knew there was no other way for me to survive.

Once I got her to America I went to the state called Illinois. I found work and a wife named Maria Regan, Irish lass she was, in Putnam County. In 1852 we were married and Maria and I farmed, had children and went to the Catholic Church here. Never once, mind you, did we forget our homeland of Ireland. I could all me life see those green fields, before the blight and famine, the sea crashing against the rocks in Galway.

Maria and I had eleven children. One of our lasses we named Theresa Mary. She was born in 1867 after the great Civil War here on this soil. Theresa became yer great, great, great grandmother, lass. She married a German lad named Henry Kunkel who lived here in Putnam County.

Yer granny Ruby is so proud of you lass. Maria and I hope you'll always be proud of yer Irish blood flowin' through yer veins. You' make a might fine lass to dance the Irish jig in Galway, with those lovely locks of hir flowing. Before Maria and I died we had hoped to return to see Ireland again, but we never did. It would have been a fine day indeed had we seen our folk and friends.

Love and luck indeed to ye lass,

Patrick Cosgrove

The You Go Genealogy Girls

My Mom and my aunt Cheri are referred to as the You Go Genealogy Girls. Actually they are not "girls", but don't tell them I said that. They are both grandmothers. Mom has two grandchildren and Aunt Cheri has seven grandchildren (all one family).

They are heading out next week to see how many graves they can locate in nine days and how much they can learn at the genealogy conference in Lincoln, Nebraska. It's the annual Nebraska State Genealogical Society conference where they will laugh and learn and see old friends and make new ones. From there they will travel south to Topeka, Kansas to see Aunt Cheri's son, his wife and their seven children, ranging in age from 16 to 3.

Their agenda requires them to make stops at various cemeteries here in Nebraska to decorate graves and locate them. They will be Mom's relatives and Aunt Cheri's relatives and probably anybody else that interests them. I am sure they might even find a few in Kansas that catch their eye.

My Mom likes to pack and repack and repack. Last summer she left on vacation for the east coast she packed and then repacked five more times before she got it just right. She is also a shoe-person so I'm sure she'll take at least seven or more pairs of shoes and wear them all while she's gone. There will also be the necessary things to survive such a long trip, such as the laptop computer, iPod and digital camera. They will take maps and books and magazines...anything to keep their mind on the right track.

I am sure they will shop along the way, looking for more books and possibly an antique or two. Since each will have their own suitcases and carrying bag, the laptop, all the adds and ends, that doesn't leave much room in their car for extras. But nobody will tell them that. Packing light is not something familiar to them.

Aunt Cheri drives a mini van which Mom has "lovingly" called the gypsy van. They can load that mini van full of a lot of "stuff". However, this trip they are taking Mom's little red, Dodge neon. Small trunk, but it gets good gas mileage. Before they get home I wouldn't be suprised if they have items strapped on the roof....such as antiques and books.

Y'all look for them heading across Nebraska and then back across Kansas. They will be those You Go Genealogy Girls (grannies) in the little red car that is dragging the ground and barely has overpass clearance because of what's on the top. I am sure they will have oodles of fun to last them until the next trip they conjure up which I have learned will be in May.

Tornados and Tombstones

It was about thirty years ago that my parents, my grandparents, my brother and I went to the Ozarks in Missouri. It was our first long vacation with my paternal grandparents. The guys rode in the front seat with Dad driving. That left three the girls in the back. We left Nebraska early one morning and managed to get most of the way across Kansas by evening.

Kansas was what prompted Grandma and Grandpa to get into an argument. Grandpa was always watching the weather and worrying about the early summer storms. He called them cyclones and Grandma, in the back seat, would nudge him on the shoulder and correct him by saying they were tornadoes. The comparisons and conversation would carry on for many miles with each trying to get the last work. Of course, once we started laughing, the conversation picked up in intensity. Fortunately we never saw a tornado or a cyclone.

Memories were made in the Ozarks, particularly at Branson, Missouri. We went to shows and water slides, amusement parks and lakes. It was the same every year, but with Grandma and Grandpa it was special. Once we were there they stopped talking about cyclones and tornadoes as the entertainment was better.

I can remember the trip back. We didn't go near Kansas for the fear we would travel the width of the state with cyclones and tornadoes discussed heatedly. Instead we drove north to Harrison County, Missouri. Mom, being the genealogist in the family, decided we should go to the Foster Cemetery and locate the graves on ancestors.

Grandpa became emotional when we found his great, great grandmother's tombstone. She was Anna Wells Gardner, born 1816 in Kentucky and died in 1882. Mom told us the story of how she became a widow at age 22 when pregnant with Grandpa's great grandfather. Anna took her young children to Iowa and then eventually to Harrison County.

I am glad we encountered tombstones of relatives instead of tornadoes or even cyclones. Those trips which would continue to Missouri and also to Colorado were great memory makers in my growing up years.

My Mom Tells Me

When I was about nine months old Mom started working on a genealogy book. It was about Dad's family and she tells me that it isn't very good. She wasn't that experienced then. She also tells me how she had to type letters to relatives asking and begging at times for information and old photographs. When she decided to put all that information into a family book, the old typewriter just wouldn't work. She rented an electric typewriter. I can't imagine producing a book on a typewriter, even an electric one.

Mom had a card table in the living room with the typewriter and paper on it, plus all her notes. Each morning she would cut strips of paper for my three year old brother to color and paste together in loops. She also photocopied the old family photographs for him to study. That would occupy him for a couple hours while she typed.

When I wasn't sleeping or playing in my crib, I was hungry. Mom would balance me on top of her feet, prop the bottle in my mouth and swing me back and forth on her feet while she typed. That's about like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. It seemed to work.

We grew up knowing her as Mom and somebody who went to cemeteries and talked to relatives. There were always books and family charts around the house. Relatives would come to visit or we would visit them. It was our life and I guess we didn't know anything different. Our friends couldn't name off relatives, but we knew their names and everything about them. When I was six years old we moved. I went to school and told my teacher and friends that we were migrating. Wonder where I got that word! Growing up genealogy was indeed interesting and fun.

Genealogy Kitchen Sink

Last week there was a gala at the local library. It was a chance for genealogist to participate in a show and tell. They called it the Genealogy Kitchen sink. That's about what it was. They brought everything imaginable.

I went to it with my Mom (the genealogist), my Aunt Cheri and my nine year old daughter. We had tables set up with things that might interest genealogist. Mom brought some new books, old documents, and family treasures. My aunt had two tables with displays on photo enhancement and manipulation. The highlight was my daughter who with the help of her grandmother had filled in her family album with names, dates, locations and photos. It ws given to her in December by the North Platte Genealogical Society members when she was Junior Hostess at the Christmas brunch. I think this is a great way to get young people involved in appreciating their heritage.

One of the members brought a display of photographs spanning generations. The family members returned to the same housses to have photographs taken many years later. That is a good way to prserve memories and also share at reunions.

The secretary of the genealogy society had an interesting desplay of photographs and documents she had purchase don eBay. They were all family members and from an estate sale. I can't imagine how shocked she was when she saw them for sale one eBay. Maybe we should all check eBay more often.

I enjoyed visiting with the genealogists, sharing in Mom's delight at the good turn out and also telling them about my blog. My Mom has a blog also...Genealogy Lines. Everybody check it out!

Have another great week searching or just lovin' the genealogist in your family!

The Genealogist and Cornhusker

Do you know what is is like growing up genealogy? That's where somebody in your family lives and breaths genealogy. They talk non-stop about genealogy. All they want to do is go to courthouses, libraries or cemeteries. That was my Mom. We grew up in Nebraska where the obsession was Cornhusker football for my Dad and genealogy for my Mom.

When my brother and I were in early grade school Mom decided to take us to a cemetery. It wasn't too far from home, but in the country here in Nebraska. Mom was working on a special project and it was summer...what a great family outing this would be. What she didn't realize was that my brother and I would find every bug in the cemetery. We actually did not want to go and so once the bugs started biting we threatened her that we would telll Dad that she had taken us to the cemetery and that's where the welts came from on our legs and arms. Dad never said a thing because he knew Mom's obsession.

My Dad passed away last year and there's a Cornhusker hellmet on his tombstone. Mom's side has a tree with "Genealogist" under it. Now Mom and I are in the same town and having fun together, doing the things mothers and daughters do. I have noticed though that she is tempting my nine year old daughter into genealogy....taking her to cemeteries, libraries and helping her with the family tree. It never seems to end.