Perhaps I may as well
admit it; I believe that I was one of those inquisitive children who always
ask, “Why?” And I didn’t want to hear the obvious, I wanted the DETAILS!
As early as just having learned to write, I would sit at my
Grandmother’s dining room table; the lace tablecloth had been neatly folded and
carefully tucked into the bottom drawer of the buffet, leaving the polished
wood of the table peaking through the piles of papers and black genealogy
books. Grandma would hand me a blank pedigree chart and a completed one and
have me transpose the names from the full one to the empty page. I never asked
the purpose of this assignment but felt it was important. I was always
intrigued by the names and the old dates. Dates that completed the questions: B
for birth, M for married, D for death. I felt a strange pang of sadness as with
a few scribbles of my pencil I was able to sum up a person’s life in those few
dates; life’s Beginning, Middle and End and then on to the next name.
“WHO was this person?” I’d ask. Grandma always knew their
story and was willing to take the time to tell me, I would often say, “But
Why?” And invariably she would know the answer. I fell in love with those
people. Those grandmas and grandpas with all of the “greats” attached. Also
being a child with an overactive imagination…it was easy to put myself right
with them in their exciting lives filled with adventure, hard work, love for
the Gospel and each other.
Perhaps that is the reason that many years later I was able
to fulfill my lifelong need to walk where they walked and see what they saw. I
wanted to stroll through the English villages and I wanted to look up at the
Swiss Alps; I wanted to buy a coo-coo clock in the Black Forest of Germany and
I wanted to eat frikadeller & rødkål in Copenhagen and see if I could
actually locate the very spot in the Danish picture hanging in Grandpa’s home.
That’s why I found myself one summer many years later perched on a
chair outside Det Gamle Thehus at the foot of an ancient windmill in the tiny
hamlet of Viby Denmark eating a Polar Is with a small pink spoon. My Danish
genealogist friend, Jytte, waved her own spoon at the surrounding area pointing
out the rooftops and lanes that my great-greats knew so well in their lives.
“The large house you can see down the road was an uncle’s of yours over 250 years
ago”, she said.
I was well aware that these homes were not tourist sites, but
where people are still born, get married and die. Those same three vital dates
- but oh so much more real to me now that I could walk on the same roads, smell
the straw on the roofs, feel the sunshine that lasts way into the night and
marvel at the blue sky and fields lined with red poppies, white daisies and
blue cornflowers. The same fields where so many of my family sowed, cultivated
and gathered wheat to feed their families.
Jytte explained the dynamics of the
Danish family. The families were close, the Grandparents were honored and were
given the responsibility of caring for the little grandchildren and teaching
them to plant the household gardens, care for the smaller animals; create
handiwork and to read and understand the scriptures. Each generation devoted to
and loving the next. I could feel their love for me…another granddaughter only
separated by time.
But even more important than seeing where they lived, discovering the personal life stories of our ancestors and getting to really know them with their trials, their hardships and challenges are what gives us our identity and our courage and our desire to make something of our own lives.
The lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us footprints on the sands of time. - Thoreau
Truly the ancestors for which I feel the closest connection are those who wrote their autobiographies, sharing not only their experiences but their emotions and their faith and the things they learned in life. Things I try to pass on to my own sons and their children.
"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond. And their eyes were my eyes." - Richard Llewellyn
So write, record your story for those who come. Keep adding to your story as events unfold in your own life and also, as you discover stories of your ancestors....pass them down to the next generation as they will never really know who they are until they know from whence they came!
WRITING ASSIGNMENT #24 - ANCESTORS
Chances are, throughout your life you have been inspired by stories of your ancestors.
Retell some of your favorite ones here.
Remember to give the full name, birth date and birth location of the ancestor and exactly how you are related.
It would be good to include a pedigree chart here (and any photos you may have of them) with your writing.
Have fun. Be inspired, share the inspiration.
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