Digging for Roots
by Julia Sneden
About 30 years ago, my husband, who is possessed of an inquisitive mind and remarkable organizational skills, was asked if he could help a relative figure out a genealogical question. It didn’t take much to set John off on a search that answered the question, and his success eventually led him to what has become his avocation. He’s this family’s go-to source for information about my family as well as his, and as the word has gotten out, about the families of a number of friends, too. He has made some surprising discoveries.
It was many years after we married that his parents (New Jersey) finally met my father and stepmother (California). We had casually remarked about a certain similarity between our fathers. We knew that each had family roots in 17th century New Amsterdam, but beyond that, there was a slight physical resemblance, and there seemed to be a likeness of psychological makeup as well. Both men were optimists, were quick to make friends, and had great senses of humor.
When John decided to look into possible genealogical connections, it didn’t take him long to discover that our fathers were in fact 5th cousins, via an eighteenth century common ancestor named Jacob Dyckman. That discovery meant that John and I are sixth cousins, and our three sons are their own 7th cousins (and for a short while thereafter they took delight in greeting each other with cries of "Cuz!").
Not only were our fathers related: John’s mother was related several times over to both my parents, who in turn were, way back, related to each other. Yikes! Those early New Englanders didn’t marry too far afield. So far, all that in-breeding hasn’t produced any certifiable catastrophes, probably because there were occasional infusions from other gene pools. For which, believe me, we are very grateful.
Why do people become interested in genealogy? There are certainly too many reasons to count, but a few of the more common are:
- Health information: questions about genetically-transmitted diseases, general health, and longevity
- Connection to the past: a kind of “where do I fit in?” look at ancestral quirks or intellectual propensities, or perhaps just a curiosity to see whether anyone back there also had a wrinkled toenail or curly red hair. It seems that all sorts of physical preferences can also be passed along in the genes: I, for example, often sit with a thumb thrust between my index and middle finger, exactly, I am told, like my grandfather Kelsey. He died before my birth, so I am not inadvertently copying something I have seen.
- Insight into history: where did the ancestors come from, and what drove them to reach this country? What kinds of wars or social disruptions were they involved in? What were the migratory patterns (generational stages of their journeys west), and why?
- Love of the pursuit, i.e. love of research. John claims that a successful genealogical search has the same kind of satisfaction as solving The New York Times Sunday crossword, as each clue falls neatly into place.
- Looking for interesting names to give children, or perhaps just interesting names, period. I had an ancestor named Torf, who lived in Normandy and was descended from a chieftain of Rollo the Dane (those Vikings didn’t just harry England; Norsemen slashed their way all over the place, hence the name "Normandy" for that section of northern France). Torf’s wife was named Ertemberge, which seems like an unwieldy moniker. I wonder if he had a nickname for her: "Ert?" "Ertie?"
- Ego stroking: looking for someone famous or infamous to claim. From what I’ve observed, this isn’t usually a prime mover, just an incidental add-on. But where it is the driving force, it is a mighty potent one.
There are ways of dealing with that. One of the best I’ve heard of involved an elderly and delightful woman I’ll call Catherine. She had a sister-in-law named Hazel, who was a dedicated genealogist of the "see-how-wonderful-my-lineage-is" type. After Hazel managed to join the DAR, she began urging Catherine to look into her own genealogy, all the time hoping, one suspects, that Catherine’s pedigree wouldn’t qualify her. Catherine ignored the urging for quite awhile, until, for the sake of family peace, she agreed to write to a cousin who kept up with the ancestors, to request the necessary documentation. Back came a letter:
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