Family Tree

My cousin's husband is retired and, to fill the hours, he likes to research family trees. He's now in the process of hunting for information about the Neitzey family. This is going to be a long, long, long process!

There have been several snags, already. I have Jimmy's great-grandfather with the middle name of Maurice, but Dick found him with the middle name of Edwin. He has a marriage certificate and other documents with "Edwin". That must have been his name.

We had the same sort of bugaboo when researching the Moseley family. My cousin in Richmond gave my great-grandfather's name as "Benjamin", but it turns out years later that his name was "Mortimer". Egad! If my name was Mortimer, I'd change it to Benjamin in a heartbeat!

Years ago, I sat down with Mom and had her help me put names to the piles of photos she had. On some of them, she had no idea except that she remembered something about someone who called that person something, but it wasn't his real name but a nickname, now if only she could remember it, she thought he was a cousin or an old uncle, or maybe he was just a good family friend and they called him "uncle so-and-so". Try writing THAT on the back of a photo.

I try to write the names on all the photos, but sometimes it seems so silly! Everyone knows who Maggie is! Of course, that's Popie! Well, that's how Mom figured it, too. Everyone knows who these people are, no sense wasting time writing every name on every photo.

Sometimes, I feel like writing the person's name, date of birth, parents' names, etc., on the back of every picture. I have pictures of friends' babies and I have no idea who the kids are, much less who the friends were. That was almost 40 years ago, for heaven's sake. On some, I do have the child's name, but I have no idea who the parents are. On a few, I have the child's name AND the parents' names and I STILL don't know who they are.

Family trees are such a wealth of information. I love opening my huge book (it's going to get even bigger with the complete Neitzey tree) and thinking about the people who came before me. I am a part of them. They are a part of me. Sometimes I think of the people who have come and will come after me. My great-grandchildren, for instance. Will they know anything about me? I don't know much about my 'greats', except their names (maybe) and where they lived. Did any of them like to make things, like I do? Were any of them musical, like I pretend to be? Did any of them make up conversations for their animals? We loved to do that when we had a cat and a dog.