Journey of Discovery: Finding Out Who I Am Really

 Recently I saw an episode of a show called “Who Do You Think You Are?” where famous people traced their roots to discover their ancestors. This has been something I have wanted to do for a long time but haven’t. The show gave me just the push I needed to get started on this journey of discovery.

My mother told me stories about her childhood and being raised by her grandmother. So, I decided to start there in the hope of learning a little more of who by great grandmother was and where she came from, and how she met my great grandfather and something of the life they lead. I found a few free sites where I could start my search and I was off and running. Sort of.

The first thing I discovered is that unearthing information about your ancestors is not as easy as those shows and all those books makes it look. While you can gain a ton of information off census records from 1930 and before getting any more current information is extremely difficult as it seems they passed a law after that year not allowing census records to be published. So, I was unable to find out much about my mother or her siblings at all, and very little about my mother’s mother although what a lot of what I did find out was rather surprising.

For example, I always assumed that my grandmother on my mother’s side had always lived in Ohio. After all she was born there, she died there, and whenever we visited her when I was child she lived there. So imagine my surprise to discover that she was married in Michigan the state I reside in.

The second surprise was the man she married. My mother always referred to her father by the name of Bailey, so imagine how shocked I was to discover his given name was actually Clarence. I was able to discover that my grandfather was 8 years older than my grandmother at the time of her birth. However try as I might I could find little information of where they lived or even a death certificate for either of them.

However, the marriage certificate for my grandparents did give me the names of great grandfather and great grandmother on my grandfathers sides which I had never known.

I was also able to discover quite a bit about my great grandparents which I never knew such as the fact that they had 4 children not the two that I had always thought they had, and that they raised 2 other grandchildren besides my mother and that their eldest daughter and what I assume to be her husband and their children lived with my grand parents during the depression.

I am not searching Pennsylvania records to try and discover whether my great grandfather had any siblings and am trying to find something about my great grandmothers family. By the looks of things it could be a long and difficult process but, so far it has been an interesting journey.

I am sure that as time goes by there will be many more surprising discoveries that lay ahead and hopefully, as frustrating as these searches are there will be enough kernels of information to keep me going for years to come.