Reflections

When I was in third grade the teacher assigned us the project of learning about our ancestry. It was the 1950's, an age before everyone got bent out of shape over the mere mention of heritage. I was born a Cooley. I knew what my mother's ancestry was. Seriously her grandfather had an ever present crock of sauerkraut under his table. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what nationality he descended from. The fact that he could swear fluently in German might have had some bearing on that knowledge as well. The Cooley lineage though was a mystery to me so I asked Dad where his ancestors came from. He told me with a straight face that we were Scottish, Irish, English, and Pennsylvania Dutch. The first three I was more than familiar with, but the last one had me puzzled. We had two sets of encyclopedias in our house: Funk and Wagnalls and Encyclopedia Britannica. The Britannica included a set of Child Craft along with several small booklets on different heritages. He said Pennsylvania Dutch so my third grade mind went straight to the Netherlands and lucky me; we had a small booklet on the Dutch. I immersed myself in the history of the Netherlands. I fell in love with tulips, wooden shoes, windmills, and St. Nicholas who brought coal for the stockings of naughty children. I turned in my report and fortunately didn't dwell on all the wonderful things I had learned about the Dutch. My fascination with the Netherlands was somehow my own little secret that I kept to myself. Fast forward to high school history and the settling of this country. We learned how different nationalities settled in certain pockets of the colonies, but try as I might I couldn't find any Dutch in Pennsylvania. There were a lot of them in New York though. So back to the encyclopedias I went to start digging. That's when I discovered the Pennsylvania Deutsch aka the Pennsylvania Germans. By this time in life I knew all too well about my father's World War II experiences. While he rarely talked about it; his many visits and long stays in the VA mental hospital along with overheard conversations between my grandparents and my mother had told me everything I needed to know. It dawned on me at that moment that he couldn't bring himself to admit that he had German blood flowing through his veins so he used a terminology that would be unfamiliar to me yet not be an outright lie. Since those days genealogy has become one of my deep interests and I've been able to put names to the Scottish, Irish, English, and German ancestors along with a sprinkling of other nationalities that no one ever eluded to. The purpose of this blog is to give life to some of those ancestors because genealogy isn't simply a born on and died on set of dates to me. It's putting humanity to the people who were responsible for my very existence. If I happen to bring a bit of entertainment to someone who stumbles upon this blog as well then so much the better.

 

The second goal of this blog is to connect with other distant relatives who are also researching. For years I've had a database at Ancestry.com, but for anyone to actually access that they have to pay to see it. I have searched for a way to share all of the years of my research without putting a financial hardship on someone and a blog seems to be the better way. It also gives me a chance to share with family members without them needing to be subscribed to something.  

 From time to time I might wander to other subjects that are connected to my family, but not actual genealogy. I have a large folder full of pictures of men that Dad trained before they were sent to Europe to fight. After Dad was wounded and could no longer serve in combat he was sent to Camp Fannin, Texas to train troops. He took pictures of many of these men and my grandmother saved them in her trunk for years. They got passed down to me. It somehow seems wrong to just leave them in that folder when many of them gave their life in service to their country. So buckle up your seatbelts and come along with me on a trip down memory lane.