Genealogy

Besides being MIA due to the 9/15 tax deadline (or 9/17 thanks or no thanks to the extra weekend) I have also been busy working with Aunt Joy on the Blair family genealogy.  What a project!  Joy has a large "blue print" of the family that was done in 1964 that she's made notes on over the years.  I'm not sure who made it back then or how they made it, but it is on a piece of paper about 16X22 inches and has information from my great, great grandparents on down through parts of my generation.  Then Joy penciled in what she could beyond that, but ran out of room and probably ran out of energy over the years! 

She's now wanting to create an updated one and fill in all the holes, plus document little stories and facts about the family members that would be fun to share.  We haven't nailed down our plan for how to present it all, but our hope is to give a copy to all of the family units from her father down - which is a lot!  Joy was oneof 6 kids, and they all had kids who have kids...you get the idea.  It's a lot.  But it's fun!

I went up and spent a few hours with her on Saturday going through what she has on the blue paper plus other odds and ends that she's kept in her "Blair tree" folder.  I created an account on ancestry.com and we sat in the library at her retirement home entering half of the family in the website.  I finished the rest at home that night and then when I went to print it I realize it's horrible!  I don't like the format it prints in or how it looks, and I don't know how to make it any better.  I looked for other options and I found one called iFamily made for Macs that I think is pretty nice.  Rather than a website it's software you can download.  I have a trial version now and I've entered Joy, her siblings and below and I think the printout is much easier to follow.  It is a data base system so it has a lot of different views, different data entry screens for notes on each family member, pictures, etc - it is much more thorough than the free version of ancestry.com.  But now I get to re-enter everyone!  It's much faster in this program though so I should have it all done pretty soon.  I'm hoping to print it off soon and mail it to Joy so she can see where our holes are (birthdays, children, etc) and we can contact the people we need so that we can get it all entered.  Then we have to figure out how we want to document the stories, history, biographies, etc.  I'm SO excited to be doing this!

My great grandparents left Canada I believe just before the depression, but I'm not 100% sure on that timeline yet, and moved to Texas with their 6 children.  At some point during their time in Texas they got divorced and the kids were asked, each one separately, which parent they'd prefer to live with.  In the end my great grandfather took one of the kids back to Canada and the other 5 remained in Texas.  That was the base of my knowledge before I started spending more time talking to Joy, and I'm finding the history to be rich and fascinating.

It's fun to learn about my family's history, and it's even more fun to hear the stories straight from Joy.  To see her face as she recants a story of her and her siblings 80 years ago is incredible.  Her MEMORY is incredible, and the way the stories still touch her.  She also talked a lot about my grandfather who I never met.  He passed away suddenly when my dad was 17 so I've never known much about him other than his name, how he died, and that Mimi still loved him as much the day she died as the day he did.  Joy told me about how beautiful their marriage was and how incredible it was to witness a love like that.   So many of the traits she mentioned - having a wild, mischievous streak, having a heart the size of Texas and a love that filled a room, knowing every person in a room, a deep booming voice, and being the most supportive and loving husband she'd ever seen - sounded like she was talking about my dad.  The apple doesn't fall far, and it's fun for me to know those things which I had never heard.  I love the country song, "I wanna love like Johnny and June" and apparently that's how my grandparents were.  It warms my heart to think of it.

She told me so many little stories here and there that I've written down to share with our family, but I can't help but feel like I really struck gold in being able to hear it from her.  The stories won't come to life when I re-tell them as they did when she spoke.  Or maybe I'm wrong, but I do feel like I got the better end of all of this.

If anyone knows of a good way to wrap all of this up into a pretty bow I'd love to hear it.  I have different thoughts and ideas on how to do it but I can't seem to nail exactly what I think I want in my head.  And after we finish the Blair family Joy wants me to help on the MacLaren side (my great grandmother who stayed in Texas with her 5 kids)  THEN maybe I could do the Loving family?  Mimi's family.  What an idea.  I could be a genealogy pro.  And to think...history was always my least favorite subject.  I guess it makes a difference when it's my own!