I don't even know where to begin. I am feeling a renewed desire to blog, not just for my personal enrichment, but to save any offspring the headache of trying to figure shit out about their family.
Not that everyone has a burning desire to know their family history. I always have, but I think that has to do with only having one parent growing up, so instead of focusing on the half that was missing, I threw myself into finding out as much as I could about my mom's side of the family. Being as close in age with my youngest uncle as I am, and being with my grandparents for a good chunk of my life, I tend to forget I even -have- another biological family.
I sealed my fate as family biographer when I was a preteen- my grandfather gave me a book that belonged to his grandmother, saying I'd be the only one to appreciate it's history. Then my grandmother did the same thing with her sister's books. And then, the pictures.
Oh. My. God. The pictures.
I come from a long line of shutter bugs. Which is awesome- I have a visual history of my family going back to the start of photography.Thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures. Actually seeing different features that we all have, and who had them them first is amazing. The problem? Well, problems? 1- my relatives didn't like to label pictures, so pinning down dates and names is...fun. 2- half of what's labeled is in Flemish, and in a beautiful but hard to read cursive handwriting. The Flemish I know isn't as helpful as I'd like.
This past weekend, my mom and her husband were in town- we spent the first two days in Boston, then he went to NYC, and my mom came back home with us. Sunday afternoon through Wednesday morning saw us either pouring over pictures, trying to sort and label them, or trying to find evidence of my great-grandparents, from their gravesite to the houses they lived in while in Massachusetts.
We were able to label about 3,000 pictures. I have about 8 or 9 thousand to go. On top of figuring out who people are, I've been scanning them and putting them on Facebook for the rest of my family to see and enjoy. As much as I may complain about it, I really love doing it. There's just a real sense of urgency since pretty much the only person who may know who some of the mystery people are is my grandmother, and she's several states away and recovering from back surgery so she isn't online that much at the moment. Mom took the Rosetta Stone of pictures home with her and is going to go visit Gram and see what she can find out. That just leaves the Belgian pictures. I'm not sure that any relatives are still around that may know who these people are (though, there has to be- my great grandfather was the youngest of 23. TWENTY-THREE. And he had a mess of nieces and nephews, so there has to be SOMEONE around who still knows these people. HAS TO.)
All our investigating left us with more questions instead of answering them. For starters- do you know how many of my forebears had children, then got married? Almost all of them. So much for this puritanical nonsense people are always going on about. One of my great-great grandmothers was 13 when she left Belgium for Argentina, and was 14 when she had my great-grandmother. Then moved back to Belgium and got married. Just. What. And I spent so much of my life feeling bad for being a bastard. Apparently we all are.
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23? That's... that's Duggar territory! She must have been TIRED.
ReplyDelete3,000 down, 9,000 to go? That's some serious dedication... When you're done with your family, can you do mine? There's less of them, but some might be French or Irish, depending how far you are going.
ReplyDeleteHeidi- At least they had a reason to have lots of kids- put those little fuckers to work. And not all of them made it to adult hood. So. Definitely not Quiver-full nonsense, but still. I not that fond of being around ONE kid, let alone 23. TWENTY. THREE.
ReplyDeleteJay- That 9,000 is just what I still have from my grandma right now. It doesn't include what she still has, or my store of pictures that's locked in the closet because I don't even want to THINK about them right now. And I would gladly work on someone else's family! Just may be a few years before I get this lot sorted out. :)