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Health & Fitness

Who Do You Think You Are? Redux

Genealogy for the Common Folk

Do you know who you are? Sure, it seems like a silly question, but many people don't know (or don't care, in some cases) much about their family histories. Thankfully, shows like NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" have regular individuals becoming curious about their heritage. Although the celebrities who are researching their genealogies are rich and famous, the real stars of the show are the ancestors who usually come from common stock.

This is when the celebrities get to find out who they are.

Some people try desperately to trace their roots back to someone of royalty, fame or fortune. Not me; give me the common folk stories anytime. Consider the Murphy boys, who were purported to be passed out drunk when they left something cooking on the stove and started a fire that burned down the whole 300 block of South Patrick Street (Disclaimer: The drunk thing was never proven, nobody was injured, and the Red Cross helped everyone involved. These stoves frequently caught fire; the boys, however, did like their whiskey).

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My grandmother said that it was the rumor for years, and the family was never sure if it was true or not—until I found the newspaper article about where the fire originated. This, to me, is much more interesting than some ridiculously wealthy monarch who ruled over plebeians rebelling over comments regarding cake. 

Kings, queens, and other famous personalities have already had their stories written for posterity. What about your family?

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When you dig up the past, you find mysteries and puzzles that awaken the detective in you. You will also be able to get to the truth and either support or debunk family lore. For instance, my great-great grandfather died not even two weeks after his baby daughter in 1910. Baby Madeline was one week shy of her first birthday when she passed away. Her father Michael, according to the family, was so distraught that he did not wear a coat on that chilly, rainy October morning of her funeral and caught the pneumonia that killed him; however, a search of the death certificates and burial records shows that both Madeline and her father died from typhoid. It is highly unlikely that Michael would catch typhoid because he was standing in the rain without a coat. It is much more reasonable to believe that if the baby was sick, her father was holding, kissing, and rocking her to sleep in an effort to soothe her and caught the fever as a result. Or, he might have have caught it first, and baby Madeline, not yet immune to disease, was affected and perished before her father. Did I mention that he had five children? They were not rich by any means and Michael was a day laborer at a lumber yard. Madeline was originally buried in the Methodist-Protestant Cemetery; when her father died almost two weeks later, she was re-interred with him in the non-denominational Bethel Cemetery. Why? This is still a mystery, but I do have several theories that I am following up on. Your investigation, like mine, will sometimes yield almost as many questions as answers.

Your research may reveal some surprising facts. On my paternal grandmother's side of the family, it was carried down through the generations that her mother's family was Scottish and her father's side was Irish. After searching marriage, census, and immigration records, it was found that my grandmother's mother was born in Pennsylvania; her mother was born in Scotland to—wait for it—Irish immigrants.

Many Irish went to Scotland first to seek jobs because the voyage was shorter and a lot cheaper. It turns out that both sides are actually Irish in heritage. They were Catholic families in which most of the men were coal miners (including one who was a bare-knuckles boxer) and settled in Pennsylvania coal-country. Definitely Irish. This illustrates how the investigation of records can change what you thought you knew about your family's past.

When you go beyond names and dates, you will uncover events that bring your ancestors to life in your mind and on paper (or computer file). They don't need to be royalty or the upper echelons of society for you to have a sense of your place in the world. Every family has stories that are better than any novel than you could ever buy. Be your own detective and find out who you are. 

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