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I have loved the discovery process of genealogy and researching my ancestors. When I was introduced to family trees in school my interest was piqued.
Shortly after I started dating my husband I discovered a website that is dedicated to my maternal side and all of our cousins. From this discovery I contacted a cousin, a professional Genealogist, who offered me some guidance.
One thing led to another and before I knew it I had multiple family trees growing on my Ancestry.com page. One tree is for my Adoptive Family, which includes both my father (Green and Dellray) and my mother’s (Reynolds and Keele) lines. There is a tree for my husbands father (Davis and Beenblossom) and mother (Rader and Watters). The last tree I have is for my biological mother (Walker and Riley), the man she says is my father (Totman and Stephens) and the man Ancestery DNA says is my father (Zimmerman and Dunbar). I spent many hours just hanging out with the many ancestors on these lines, researching their stories.
Brick Walls
A common phrase in Genealogy when you cant get anywhere in your research is a brick wall. Over the years I have had many brick walls and I am sure that I will have more. One was my Great-Grandma Dellray. Her life’s journey took many turns and even to this day there are “secrets” we will never know. There is a an emotional high when you break through the wall that has been keeping you from discovering an individual.
When the excitement fades and you sit back down from dancing around the room celebrating (or is that just me), then what. On to the next one right?
My most recent brick wall has not been that simple. It all started with the tale of two men. Only one of them could be my birth father – the one that provided his DNA. After much thought I took the DNA test (Read my DNA Journey here https://rootedsimplyblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/my-ancestry-dna/ ) from Ancestry. After what seemed like an eternity (reality is that it did not take as long as Ancestry said it would) I had the email notification that my results were in!
For those who do not understand the process when I opened the email it did not tell me exactly who my father was. There was still some research and digging to do. I poured over my results and compared them to my sisters results I was able to determine that we had different fathers.
I was still pretty even emotionally at this point. I always knew this would be a possibility. My first task was to title each man accordingly on my tree and I spent well over a year discovering about his ancestors. I will say that it was disappointing to not have any one from his side of the family respond to messages I had sent. But that is a blog post for another day.
My new goal now that I had discovered him, was to find a picture. Sadly he past way in 1985, before the invention of Facebook and selfies. I had found his obituary and paid to have a copy sent to me. I assumed it would have a picture of him. Sadly it did not.
Eventually, through a Facebook genealogy group I was able to discover year book pictures. This was it. I was bout to tear down this wall. I was so excited and when I looked at his picture for the first time, I cried. Here was a man that I would never get to know but who was a part of me.
The emotional high lasted for a long time, this was my Unicorn. I did what I did not think I could do!
Sudden Stop
The thing about emotional highs is there will be a time that you have to come back down.
It is never really the falling that I have been afraid of but the sudden stop. So I discovered my Unicorn, now what. The truth is my sudden stop happened because I did not have another brick wall to tear down. I needed a moment to ride the emotional roller coaster of life, that brick wall was pretty monumental. I poured so much time and energy into my research I was needing a break. While I felt guilty, it was nice to enjoy other hobbies that I forgot I liked.
Jumping Back In
Now that I am ready to start researching again, I do not want to jump back in (my luck it would be a belly flop) but more like wading in slowly. I want my time spent more focused. I admit I often go down rabbit holes. I want my next steps in Genealogy to be thoughtful and I want to learn more through classes and lectures. I am excited for RootsTech 2020 and have already registered. I have also signed up for an online course through our library.
As I get back in I am excited to expand my knowledge and all the new brick walls that will come my way. Have you had a similar brink wall experience? What genealogy classes webinars or blogs do you find helpful?