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September 2007: Digging in the Ancestry
Jammin' with Jane and I have both become interested in genealogy. Seven or eight years ago our brother-in-law, Jack Coder was doing genealogy for our mother-in-law, Mary Ellen McNeal. Her maiden name was Cook and her family lived in Coal Valley. Since we are also members of that family he asked for information about my relatives. I found myself unable to remember my grandmother’s (on my father’s side) first name. This was somehow disturbing to me. I felt “when I’m gone all these people will disappear”. I found her name (it was Ingrid) and then made arrangements to visit the Swedish Immigration place at Augustana College. My ancestors were all Swedish. There I found the records of the Lutheran Church in Granville, Illinois, that they had attended, and helped found. Their names were there, and the Parish where they lived in Sweden. My name was there also, but scribbled in pencil and misspelled. I didn’t make much impact on those Lutherans and they never made much impact on me.
The Parish was what I needed. I was not very impressed with the people at the Swedish Immigration Center so I took my information and went to the Mormon church’s Family Research Center in Davenport. In their headquarters in Salt Lake City, the Mormons have the biggest genealogical library in the world. It’s part of the Mormon belief that nobody gets to Heaven unless they’re Mormon. However, it is possible to get your whole ancestry into Heaven if you can identify them. The people at the Center were very friendly and helpful, and soon I was perusing reels of tape showing the clerical surveys, as they were called, from Sweden. The Lutheran Church served many of the functions that government agencies serve here. Swedish genealogical records are considered the best in the world. I’ve found the search fascinating. Sort of like detective work. Finding and following up on clues. Some people avoid genealogy in fear of finding bad things about the relatives. Personally, I think it’s neat when I come across that hint of shadiness.
One fun thing is finding out that some of the family legends that have been passed down are totally false. My wife’s family has one of these. Her mother’s family came from England. They used to say about Jane’s grandfather: He was conceived in England and born in the US, and sort of giggled about it. Jane was searching the genealogy and having trouble finding them in Coal Valley. Her grandfather was born in 1872. She finally tried the 1870 census and there was the family living in Coal Valley. There were two older children and they were there. Her grandfather hadn’t been born yet. He couldn’t have been conceived in England unless the gestation period was 2 years long. How does this kind of thing get started?Who knows, but this sort of thing is not uncommon and is one of the fun things about genealogy. If you readers haven’t got into this I suggest you get your family information together and head over to the Family Research Center. You’ll find out some fascinating things.