Sunday, June 15, 2014

Tracing Ancestry on Fathers' Day

Today is Fathers’ Day, worth blogging about and an appropriate way to celebrate since I’m at home alone. So, are you one of them, those ancestor hunters who can’t leave it alone? I am not. Yet, I’ve heard it is easier these days and I am tempted, but frankly, I’m afraid it might become a sinkhole for the mind and a terrible drain on my time. Dates and statistics don’t interest me much. They are like dry bones. I want to see them, those real people who came before me, understand them. I want to get acquainted with them, even in little bits and pieces of human interest. How much more fascinating than reading fiction would that be! 

Common sense tells me this is impossible. It also tells me to spend my time better in getting to know the ones who are with me in the present. Even that can be a task too great, but it’s worth a try. Ever try to get a teen-ager to tell you what he or she is thinking? Even harder when they're older. So, for the moment I'll tell them. (Some really do read my blogs.)

My own father, Reuben Hahn, came from sturdy pioneer people. His grandfather, Christian Hahn, the great grandfather who died before I was born, was a carriage driver for a wealthy landowner and left Germany to get away from his employer who forced him to abuse the horses by driving them too hard. He loved the horses too much and...well, you see, if only I could tell you how he left! Was it in the middle of the night? Did he steal away secretly or stand up to his employer boldly? Had he saved money for the passage on some ship or did he become a stowaway? Where did he land in America, and what inspired him to go west as far as Minnesota? The Homestead Act, I think. Through it he gained a large tract of land. How could he work it all? Had his sons grown up enough to help? How interesting that story would be, not to mention the love story of how he met and married Catherine who also came from Germany. I used to visit their grave-sites occasionally on the hill opposite the house I built after going back to attend my 50th high school class reunion. Their secrets were obviously buried with them.

Years later when we moved from Minneapolis my father built a home of his own on a five acre patch of that homestead land. Great Grandpa Hahn never lived to know that. He did know how his sons also worked the land, lived in the stone house he built from stones on the land, carried on what he had started. 

My other great grandfather, Thomas Pulford, I actually knew when I was around seven and eight. I took time out from cousins’ play on family gatherings to visit with him. He was my Grandma Hattie Hahn’s father. Always dressed for the occasion with best suit, bow tie, stiff-collared shirt and high buttoned shoes. He wore a mustache, had a healthy head of white hair and smoked White Owl cigars. After everyone had paid their respects he’d be sitting alone in his rocking chair, looking out behind dimly darkened glasses. He’d become totally blind. I’d always take a footstool and sit beside him for a long while asking him questions about his own childhood and he liked to hold my hand as if hoping I would not go away.

“Well, Joycie, I was born in England and my father was a ship’s seaman. I was about your age when Father came home from an ocean voyage one day and announced that he was taking us all to the New World. He wanted a better life for us.” Then Grandpa would puff on his cigar and pause a moment before he’d continue. No doubt he was really seeing in those moments! 

Little did I know the whole story though. My Great Aunt Matie told me later how Grandpa Pulford’s father, the seaman, had fallen in love aboard ship with the owner of the ship’s daughter. She had been with her mother (that would have been my great, great, great grandmother) on a voyage recommended by her doctor to help cure her from a respiratory disease. The young couple fell in love and persuaded the captain of the ship to marry them without telling the mother. When they arrived home and her parents found out and insisted on an annulment the lovers would not agree, and so the young bride’s father disinherited her. She chose love over everything but in her role as the wife of her young seaman-become-homesteader in the New World, she always bore an aristocratic air. Aunt Matie couldn’t remember her in anything but dark dresses with white lace collars and cuffs. 

I never knew my great grandparents on my mother’s side of the family and I think they’d passed on before Mother knew them, but I’d love to learn more because Grandfather Darling’s father came from Scotland and I've always been glad to be part Scottish. How he met and married my great grandmother, a French woman, I’ll never know. So far as Grandmother Darling knew, Grandpa Darling hadn’t told her either. I wonder why? The one picture I have of his mother is in an old album. It shows a proud stately woman in a long flowing elegant gown. I have a replica of the Darling coat of arms hanging in my home however, and someday I’ll try to learn more about that side of the family. Would it have something to do with the Darling River in Scotland?

The other day at a luncheon in the Garden Room a few of us at the table began telling about our parents and grandparents. I won’t reveal what was said, but I can tell you that every one of us has a goldmine of stories to tell and they are truly amazing! 

P.S There’s another story about my Great Grandfather, Jothum Turner, who fought in the Civil War and how he saw on his deathbed his baby daughter who had died when he was gone. “Why, Lottie!” he cried out with open arms and shining eyes, “I’ve never seen you before!” Then he fell back in bed and died. That story I got straight from my Grandmother Darling. When I told it to my young grandson, Jordan, some years ago he said, “Grandma, you ought to write that down for all your grandchildren!” So, I’m beginning now to get the bug. But I won’t burden my blogger friends with any more ancestor stories than today’s entry. 

If I can help it.


4 comments:

  1. I think you would love Ancestry.com. I have been tempted to join for a long time, too. From what I gather, the site can lead you to photographs. Go for it, Joyce!! xo, Julie

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  2. Don't forget Great Aunt Matie Pulford's story about that Winter back in what was called "the Little Ice Age" of the 1880's when the Stage Coach came flying into town out of the snow, and came to a halt in front of the Depot. Was that in Madison, South Dakota? Oh those passengers! What a story!

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  3. Pretty interesting tales if you ask me!! I'll try to make my life as interesting!! Its wonderful when someone APPRECIATES the lives enough to write it down!! We all benefit from the stories of our fellow man. We are ALL related!!

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  4. Grandma, I think I have (or had... might be in Mom and Dad's place now) a big bunch of photographs that I don't know who they are. If we don't know who they are, the photos just get tossed. They're just people, strangers.

    But if we know the stories, they can be retold. (Just think how many times the same story is told over and over-- Pride and Prejudice, Hamlet, all these great tales. We could write movies upon movies based on little bits of people's lives! :) And does it make it more interesting if they're related to us by blood? I guess it's just important to show interest in people while they're still here with us!

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