209 Seeking the lost, frayed and misplaced

January was a good month for finding lost ancestors. About a week ago, cousin Norma from Florida send a mailing tube which contained my husband’s grandparents’ very fragile wedding certificate, a 1935 certificate in teacher instruction from the Presbyterian Church for his grandmother Irma, and a huge formal photo of my husband’s great grandfather, George Brinton Byrum, on something that looks like the coated fabric of a window shade. We only recently learned his name, now I’m wondering about that format. A poster? Did he run for office in an organization, a town?

Earlier in the month I received an e-mail from the Shroads/Shrodes Family website--someone had answered my inquiry about Phoebe Shrodes, my father-in-law’s grandmother. The woman responding was Phoebe’s descendant and we’re trying to sort that out by e-mail.

Yesterday, cousin Jim in Alabama sent a large packet of information. He does genealogy the “right” way. About 25 years ago he interviewed the oldest member of his father’s family. He sent along a transcript of the tape, photocopies of the family Bible, a copy of a letter written in 1968 by a niece of his grandfather, and copies of some pages at the LDS online FamilySearch.

Armed with the information that my husband’s great-grandfather grew up in Beaver County, PA, I went on-line to the Family Forum, and found an entry for that family at Beaver Co, PA. Although the accuracy of the information needs to be checked, someone had posted the family four generations back from my husband’s great grandfather, to Charles, who was born in Scotland but was paying taxes in Beaver County in 1795.

Working through other family names that Jim sent, I learned many of my husband’s ancestors were German Lutheran. One recollection of the aunt recorded on the tape is of visiting family in Pennsylvania who spoke “Dutch,” the Americanized word for Deutsch, or German. Many of my Pennsylvania ancestors were also German Lutherans, so we’ll keep digging to see if we have any distant cousins in common.

I know from discussions in my writing class that genealogy can become a full time occupation, even an obsession. Class members who used to do crafts, volunteer work, or were employed, now devote all discretionary time to their ancestors and tracking down threads and snippets of family history.

Not all people get the bug to look into their roots. When I found the huge cache of information at the Beaver County, PA site, I yelled to my husband in the next room, “Hey Hon, I’ve hit the mother lode. Come here quick.” “The cat is on my lap,” he responded.