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<DIV>I've done worked on my family lines since the early 1970's and it
complimented nicely an interest in history and an inate curiousity. It was
frustrating, however, to have names and places and dates but no stories handed
down to flesh these ancestors out. I was content with that until some
information about the support group called <EM>Adult Children of Alcohol
Parents and Dysfunctional Families </EM>crossed my desk one day. I
scanned through it because it pertains to my job...and suddenly something struck
me, so I read the material. I realized then that whether or not we are
children of alcoholic parents and dysfunctional families, who and what our
ancestors were has a definite impact on who we are as people...and I'm not just
talking about brown eyes or curly hair. Here is a story that was told
at a national mental health meeting that I attended:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB" color=#0000ff>A new husband watched fondly as
his young wife prepared dinner in the kitchen of their apartment. She
placed a pot roast on the cutting board and carefully sliced it in half.
She then placed the meat in a roasting pan with one slice piled precisely on top
of the other and put it in the over. Puzzled, the man asked why she'd cut
the roast in two. "That's the way you cook pot roast" she replied, "My mom
makes the best pot roast and that's the way she cooks it.". The next time
they were at his in-law's house the young man brought up the subject of pot
roast, "I'm curious about why you cut the roast in two." he said. The
mother-in-law looked at him with a puzzled expression and replied, " I don't
know why it needs to cook that way, I guess because it cooks better. My
mother always cooked hers that way.". Once the subject had been raised,
there was much discussion and nobody had a definitive answer. "I'll settle
this," the mother-in-law said, "I'll call my mother and ask her
why." Grandma answered the telephone and the question was put to
her; there was a long pause and Grandma said, "I don't know why you cut the
roast in half, but I had to because I only had a very small roasting
pan.".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Californian FB" color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>The point of this is that traits and beliefs and ideas are often passed
along to us unwittingly. One technigue taught by ACOA is to do a
family inventory. You begin with the earliest ancestor that you know
and write down eveyrthing that you know about them...dates and places; how
many children in their family; how old their parents were; how old they were
when they married and began to have children; family legends;
occupation...everything you can think of. For the furthest back ancestors
that may only be a name and a date and a place. You work forward, taking
each person as an individual and writing down eveything you know or have
heard. Once you have completed this task (and it's a lot more
difficult for those of us who've been doing genealogy for awhile) you start
looking at what was going on in the world at the time these people were alive
and thinking of how it may have impacted their lives. I have an ancestor
who was in the Civil War. At 25 he married a very young girl and
promptly moved with her to Indiana/Illinois where his parents lived.
Leaving her pregnant and with his parents, he went off to war. There
she was, young, pregnant, and living with her in-laws far from her own
family. When Johnny came marching home again he stayed just long enough
for her to become pregnant a second time before he went off to
the silver mines of California leaving her behind still with the
in-laws. It wasn't until several years later that he went back to Illinois
and gathered up his family to move them to Oregon. I know only the barest
facts about this branch of the family, but after doing this exercise they became
more than just names and dates. When I look at the lives of their children
I begin to see more of pattern. It's interesting to see that some patterns
are traceable through a number of generations...sometimes right down to
me!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If you do this sort of exercise and make a timeline of what was happening
in the world, you can add quite a bit to the portrait of an ancestor who has
only been a name and date. A picture and a pattern often begins to
appear. Letters and journals and memoirs are terrific when you can
find them, but far too few ancestors leave us that sort of record. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So yes, on this list we often digress, but those disgressions add to the
history...even if the history is comparatively recent.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And, as can be seen by the number of facts that quickly appear as the
result of most queries, we actually do some genealogical research from time to
time!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Carla </DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>