TIP #385 - TRADITION How many of you remember the wonderful song from "Fiddler on the Roof" called "Tradition"? This is one of my favorite Broadway plays and the music from this production always stirs my heart. What does tradition have to do with genealogy? A lot. Many of us are "blessed" <not> when we can't find much on our family. Maybe they were not elected unanimously to a high office. Maybe they didn't attend a fancy college. Maybe they were even on the wrong side of the law! As you know from my past tips, the dates and begats are crucially important, but I want to know more. I want to know the PERSON, not just the events. I want to know how they lived, what they did, who their friends were, how they spent their time, where they went to church, how it was in the battlefield, how did they feel, etc. That's not always easy, or possible, but when we can, we can get a sense of belonging. It's hard to explain in words, but I think you know what I mean. We know that scientifically their DNA, their genes, their outward appearance, their likes and dislikes, their strengths and frailities, are passed on to us, generation after generation. We are allowed by our Creator to have a dib of our great-grandfather, a dab of our 20th generation back grandmother! Thus, it's a wonderful thing to know a little more about them on a personal basis. We can look at our off-spring and proudly say that he has his father's chin; or she has her great-grandmother's eyes ... but when possible, what else do they have that has been painstakingly passed on with each new birth? I'll call this tradition. So you can't find anything spectacular on your family (or if you're fortunate, you can!). What do you REALLY know about your family? Perhaps all your immediate family has passed on, or forgotten their past. You can still do a little snooping! There is nothing more painful for me to hear than when an individual has died and left no records - diaries, photos, certificates - nothing. Or, that a trying-to-be-helpful family member trashed everything. Tradition can be broken down into two sub-categories - Oral Tradition and Oral History. Oral Tradition: I don't have any documentation of public records. You might see this in cemetery records, marriage records ... and it means that although there is no written record found, by oral tradition, John and Mary married on this date or Pete is buried there. The information can come from living sources who "remember when they had the funeral" or "I stood up with them"; but the document has been lost. Marriages that were not recorded (or lost) can be proved based on other official documents. Implied marriages are those proven by another legal document such as a deed or will distribution. As an example, one of our Gorin family back quite early in Kentucky left no marriage certificate trail. We know they were married but how can we prove it? Well .. back in Virginia, the man's mother died. They traveled from Todd Co KY to Fairfax Co VA and are written up in the settlement of her estate. The words "George Harrison and his wife ....... " This is the only legal documentation we can obtain. Or a cemetery stone which shows William Whatchamacallit and his beloved wife Morticia. In doing your family records, you need to indicate whether your record sources were by oral tradition, i.e, you did the best you could and from all evidence so and so did this or was there. Maybe your grandchildren will find it later! Oral History: I think this is the fun part of genealogy and I've been working on this a lot during the last few weeks. Again, it boils down to the fact that we can't prove or disprove it, but it surely is a good story. Many years ago, a dear lady, now deceased, wrote me to say that she was preparing a family history for her grandchildren. She was stumped on something though; her "crazy Aunt so and so" kept telling her that her (the writer)'s grandfather was a no good so and so and hung in Glasgow. She stressed that her dear aunt wasn't all with it and wanted to know if I'd heard of the hanging. I wrote her back (pre-email days!) and asked her if she would like an 8 x 10 glossy of the hanging! It certainly did exist and when she came out of shock, she came down to Glasgow to visit me and I did give her a picture of the hanging - the one and only hanging photo I'd ever seen. (We became close friends over the years too). So her aunt wasn't as crazy as they thought! She was quite open about the hanging in her book and didn't try to disguise the fact by saying that he "hung around town" on such and such a day! Older people love to tell stories. Over and over sometimes! But listen, take notes, or have them dictate them into a tape recorder, or video tape them. Oh the wonderful information you can find on your family. Things were different then; they had more time to sit on the front porch swing and just gab. Problems with what they say? Yes, sometimes. With the passage of time, these stories may have been told hundreds of times with little variations added as the memory faded. Maybe the fellow was not 8 feet tall, but just looked that way to a young child. Maybe she didn't win all the baking contests for 50 years, but she was a great cook. Older people will seldom lie about what happened oh so many years ago, but they might embellish. That's ok! It'll be pretty obvious, but never call them a liar! I'll put this on a personal nature for a minute to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. My precious Dad died back in 1996. He was a wonderful story-teller, but like most younger people, I didn't pay a lot of attention. Relative's names bored me, the stories faded from my mind. Now, I am fighting to get them back! He had 5 sisters, only one is living. She is sharp and dear to me and lives a goodly distance away. She had given me some information earlier when I did a little family book for my Dad but I knew she had a lot more to say. When I asked her recently to please, tell me more about your lives ... her reply was "honey, it's just a batch of uninteresting things to this generation". I was almost on my hands and knees via long distance and got her talking. In five minutes, I learned who my Daddy was. Tales of hard work, bread truck routes, selling apples along the road in the Depression, sneaking into the theatre because one of the sisters didn't have the nickel it cost; of the Salvation Army annual visit to their tiny town and my aunt singing on a wooden stool to raise money for them.... this is PRICELESS! My Dad always told the story of a tornado that ripped through Chestnut, IL where he was raised and of it killing his best friend. Just two weeks ago, I met the grand niece of that little boy she has sent me over 50 pages from various newspapers in the area describing the tornado, what the children went through, who lost what and a little boy trying to catch all the baby chicks from a hatchery and sticking them under his shirt to take home. Don't stories like this make YOUR family history more interesting? I learned that one of my great-grandfathers was a Methodist Church exhorter... I didn't know that! Now I have a picture of the church where he served and will soon have stories about him. THIS is genealogy the way it should be! What I would suggest - and it's only my idea. You know that if something is put in print, it becomes Gospel truth; we've discussed that before. But if you want to publish your family records - just for the family or for sale; the oral history stories are important. They must be preserved. But ... on the other hand, you aren't sure of all the facts and have no way of verifying them. What I'm doing is putting the stories in a special section with disclaimers. I use a genealogy program that allows for notes - most of them do now. After all the statistical information on the individual and the regular notes where you show sources, information from confirming documents, etc. I add note called "Oral History". In that category, I state that these are the stories that so and so told me. I have no way of verifying all the information now but found this to be extremely interesting and a great insight into the person. Then I type in all the stories that I've been told that family members need to remember. A lot of time, this jogs the memory of the reader too (if he/she is kin) and they can add more stories. Through these stories, oral history, a real person starts to develop. You gain insight as to what they liked or disliked, who their friends were, school stories, hardships during the Depression or wars ... the list is endless. I like to take those friend's names mentioned and look them up on the census records (if they are old enough to have been on a published census). Lo and behold, there they are, right next door or down the road a piece as they used to say. These are no longer just names on a census taker's list ... these are real people who visited with your family, named their children for each other, walked to school together, helped each out in times of trouble! What if you can't come up with any good tales? Well, then check out what was going on in the world during the time they lived. Was there an epidemic going through the area that might have taken the lives of someone they knew? Was the area involved in a war? Did the school burn down they would have gone to? By using a good search engine, of which google.com is my favorite, or searching through ancestry.com or the rootsweb sites, check out the information that has been posted on the town or county where your ancestor lived. Forget checking to see if they have marriage records on file or if the historical society is selling a book you want - you can do that later (and I'm sure you've already done it). This time, read the history of the county. Check out what is in that area of importance - did someone important live there during the time frame of your ancestor (maybe they had coffee together!). Was there a big political campaign going on when your ancestor was old enough to vote? Perhaps he was out campaigning for one of the candidates. Was there a revival going on in the church where you think your ancestor attended? Maybe he was in the back pew every night listening. Finding out more about where he lived and what happened when he lived there will give you a whole new view of how it was by someone (you) who wasn't there. (c) Copyright 28 March 2002, Sandra K. Gorin, All Rights Reserved. sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Col. Sandi Gorin, 205 Clements, Glasgow, KY 42141 (270) 651-9114 Publishing: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/ SCKY resource links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html < >< God Bless America ><>