This past summer, when visiting my grandmother, I started in on the geneology research again. My uncle actually had done a lot so I was reading a lot of that. Thing is, in the process, we would read that an ancestor lived in such-n-such country and maybe even fought in a particular battle, so we would look it up. There is so much interesting stuff!!! I asked my grandmother to send me copies of her information (she is bringing it next week so I can copy it). I was thinking that maybe, we should use this as a spring board to learn so much more! Somehow, when I read about the Battle of Hastings in a history book, other than the name of it being familiar passing, I retained nothing. Then to read of the actual details as it relates to my ancestors and how it led to them relocating between countries, it became so much more real and interesting and applicable. Anyone else do this?
How cool!!! I know when we id Ohio History, the girls had to have a notebook that included historical sites. Well, I had gone to a Marker Dedication when Faythe was just an infant. It was basically a "crossroad" that was really no longer there. The marker talked about the woman who had come there from Virginia back in the 1700's, and the significance of it. That woman was one of our ancestors. The person in charge of PR took a picture of the baby (always a good shot!) and included it. So when we had to have pictures of historical places, we added that one, with a note that the lady was Faythe's seven-greats-grandmother. My mom's family fought on BOTH sides of the Revolution. My mom's uncle actually owned land that had been passed down since then; it had been given to the family for services in the War. It's sold now. The Haugns married the Shovers (several times over!). They descended from a Hessian soldier, captured when Washington crossed the Delaware. Dad's mom's family was in the Johnstown Flood. My uncle has an beautiful tea set that was rescued from the flood. He visited the museum once, and got talking to a ranger. Uncle mentioned that the family had survived the flood, and told him the family name. The ranger said, "Did they spell it like this?" and pointed to his name tag! Dad's father came through Ellis Island; Dad showed me his name on the register when the kids were studying immigration.
We are just now getting to the point of history where I have more genealogical records. I'm using this information as a supplement to our regular studies. For instance, my son read about a person in history in his textbook. I told him that he was related to the guy and we looked at the genealogical records and what the textbook said about the family. I haven't had them do research though. The further we go in history the more records I have so we will probably devote even more time to it in the future.
