Crazy Aunt Connie
I was sifting through some unread blog posts last month when I saw one that caught my eye. My former college newspaper editor has been piecing together her family tree on a website that helps connect similarities in… leafs, I mean ancestors, from different users. And just like that a new impulsive ‘project’ was born. Similar to my spontaneous purchase of a cheep sewing machine to make my own clothes from curtains a la Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, I decided to jump head first into my own genealogy hunt.
My sister just so happened to be the next person to email me after this light bulb went off, so I roped her into the project with me. I’m retracing my mom’s side of the family while she documents my dad’s. I started exchanging emails with my mom and uncle last week to build the bones of the tree. I knew some things—like my mom’s name is a combination of her material and paternal grandmother’s names—but there are lots of details I didn’t know. Scandalous, dramatic and fascinating details. The last few days has seemed like a historic soap opera unfolding in my inbox one email at a time.
Whenever I complete this project, I want to do it with some of the stories included. It’s cool to know the name of my relatives, but it’s even cooler to know my great-grandpa was a coal miner in Illinois (my mom still has his mining helmet); interesting to know that after my coal-mining great-grandpa died, my great-grandma got remarried—to her husband’s brother; and hilarious to envision the story unfold of my other great-grandma hiding chocolate she bought from the store down the street in her room to snack on later—now that’s a lady I can relate to.
Hearing about all of this, I couldn’t help but think of the Brooks And Dunn song about ‘crazy aunt Connie’ who shakes up a family wedding with her wild style. Not to say my ancestors were honky tonkin’ bumpkins, runnin’ off with the groom during a family wedding; but they were traveling, working class, spit-fires—and, well, maybe some of them were runnin’ away with a new groom. Crazy great-grandma Anna.
My sister just so happened to be the next person to email me after this light bulb went off, so I roped her into the project with me. I’m retracing my mom’s side of the family while she documents my dad’s. I started exchanging emails with my mom and uncle last week to build the bones of the tree. I knew some things—like my mom’s name is a combination of her material and paternal grandmother’s names—but there are lots of details I didn’t know. Scandalous, dramatic and fascinating details. The last few days has seemed like a historic soap opera unfolding in my inbox one email at a time.
Whenever I complete this project, I want to do it with some of the stories included. It’s cool to know the name of my relatives, but it’s even cooler to know my great-grandpa was a coal miner in Illinois (my mom still has his mining helmet); interesting to know that after my coal-mining great-grandpa died, my great-grandma got remarried—to her husband’s brother; and hilarious to envision the story unfold of my other great-grandma hiding chocolate she bought from the store down the street in her room to snack on later—now that’s a lady I can relate to.
Hearing about all of this, I couldn’t help but think of the Brooks And Dunn song about ‘crazy aunt Connie’ who shakes up a family wedding with her wild style. Not to say my ancestors were honky tonkin’ bumpkins, runnin’ off with the groom during a family wedding; but they were traveling, working class, spit-fires—and, well, maybe some of them were runnin’ away with a new groom. Crazy great-grandma Anna.