Sleuthing Scenarios

Wow! I didn’t know there was so much information on genealogy sources today! And that’s without even joining a formal search! Just public records, obituaries, and other people’s research on line. I have found family names going back to the 1600’s, and familiar names mentioned by my mother in the not-so-distant past linking us like a biological road map to our past. I’m beginning to realize that everybody is related to everybody else! Some of the searches trace lines of ancestors to upwards of a thousand people!

But the personal, more intimate details revealed in obituaries and notations are more meaningful to me. I didn’t know that my Uncle Robert, who had caddied for golfers as a child, became such an important golfer that the military sent him all over the world to represent them in tournaments! Nor did I know that my Uncle George (on my mother’s side) was known as “Hook ’Em, George”, due to his sports enthusiast bent, an alumnus of the University of Texas, and that he was a bee keeper!

On my father’s side, which is harder to trace, most inquiries were concerned with tracing Indian heritage. Nearly all stated a grandmother as being ¼ Cherokee Indian. (That’s what I’d always heard about our family, too.) Only it was probably more, as both my dad and grandmother had strong Indian features. Ruefully, one comment was that most in that line of the family had huge noses! And that that was their cross to bear! Is that from the Indians? I’d always thought it was from an Irish grandfather, who, judging from a grainy home movie some 60 years old, had a pugilist nose like a prize-fighter.

I’d heard my mother say many times that she was related to the founders of Branson, Missouri. And sure enough, that name, and a varied spelling of it, showed up many times on her genealogy records. Current data I read said it was founded by a Reuben Branson who opened a general store there. My mother’s uncle operated a general store when she was growing up (a stretch, I admit, but who knows?) .

More surprises are in store as I refine my search, I’m sure. It is very easy to spend hours just looking at what’s on line, so I’m in no hurry. But, as I said before, we really are related to all of the family of man, and that, of course, stretches back to Adam. Ephesians 3:14 says, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” Family was God’s idea, and He is Head of the House!