Genealogy Family History Group Open Thread
In the long road to discovering the past as it was,I often find myself floating off into other realms. Is it my desire to see a shaft of sunshine to compensate for the bleak -or to reconcile what is 'fact' with the stories handed down in my youth?
How do you handle the contradictions, the unexpected, the unpleasant? Is your narrative affected? When is a breakthrough a break with a preferred reality?
I start off the day all fired up to make new discoveries, break new ground, maybe even organize a file or a list - and then...then I get some pictures in my email that I've never seen before! I'm thrilled. I pour over them.Willing them to provide their narrative.
One is labeled "Hyde Farm. Rockledge Farm. Norwell, Ma. The Family stayed there during WW!."
Ahhh! "The Farm"!! There's always been so much confusion about "The Farm"! Long ago conversations were peppered with:
"We were staying at the farm that winter - down on the Cape." "Your father was born down on the Cape." "Grandpa Hyde stayed with us. Down on the Cape" "Your father and Uncle went to school in a horse cart down on the Cape". As the years went by, the more vague and confusing it all became.
Then the 1910 Census showed my Grandmother and the three eldest children residing on what was a farm in Lowell which I believed to be owned by her Grandfather.I knew my Dad wasn't born in Lowell. Bette Davis was - but not Dad. He was born in Hull. Down on the Cape. But until the 1910 Census, we always thought the farm was at Hull.
So now I knew there were two farms in the family and daddy wasn't born on either one of them. He was born in the big summer house on B Street -on the Cape to be sure, but not on a farm. The house on B Street was just down from the house of a young Joe Kennedy and his new wife, Rose. (I wish I could remember the details of the story my Great Aunt told about the night Joe Kennedy tangled with the Hull fire department. "Wouldn't you know, the house they were trying to save burned down to the ground!") I digress...genealogy does that to you.
I'm intrigued by "the second farm" now. Great-Grandpa Hyde (who was a piano maker) apparently owned them both. I wish I knew how to clean this picture up a bit. It shows what looks to be a large house with a wrap around porch - and on the right, a barn.
There are several trees near the house and a lovely New England stone wall running across the front of the place.
(click to enlarge)
Now the downside of every new discovery is that it compels me to dig deeper, to know more, to attempt to understand what I've learned. I try to imagine what my ancestor's reality was in that snaphot in my hand. Off I go to Googleland to explore Norwell, Ma. I look at the City Hall site, the Historical Society, the News - and then I start looking for farms. Farms in operation, Farms for Sale, Acreage and Vintage buildings for sale. My eyes cross. My head aches. I shut down the computer and do some laundry. I make dinner. Back to Googleland. It looks like I exhausted any possibly enlightening links to "old" Norwell. Not before learning that Norwell in 1849 was known as South Scituate...another genealogical gift - information overload.
In the morning, I dash off an email to the Conservation Committee of Norwell. They have been actively listing and saving what properties they can that haven't aleady been developed into cutesy named housing tracts. I think they can probably give me some idea about the fate of Rockledge Farm. Nothing to do now until I hear back from them.
Meanwhile, I turn to the second picture of Rockledge Farm which shows my grandfather and two of my father's younger siblings.
(click to enlarge)
Grandfather seems to have a young cow on a lead coming out of the barn. I find that funny because Grandfather had lived in New York city his whole life. His Irish immigrant father died when he was 4, and a few years later his mother succumbed to consumption.
By the time he was 12, he was working as a runner on Wall Street, helping to raise his younger, also orphaned half-sister.
This photo is dark too. I take a long look at the children. It seems to me they're more interested in who is behind the camera than they are in that cow. I focus on Grandpa. There's something strange on his head. Is it a cap?
Is it his hair? All the years I knew him, his head was shaven. I can't decide what it is. Then I see her...over his right shoulder...what's that? It appears to be the face of a smiling woman. It's not his mother-in-law. Not Grandma. I decide it's his mother's spirit, happy to see the 12 year old orphan boy enjoying his hard won treasures - a family, a cow and a farm. (Yes, I know. It's probably a double exposure. But I like my story better.)
Oh, and that Norwell farm? The nice lady from the Historical Society assures me it was much too small at 3/4 of an acre to have been
a proper farm. Knowing full well the dangers of assumption, I dare to assume she hadn't spent her youth in a NYC tenement building. :-)
So tell us,has your research ever entangled your emotions in the bramble bush between reality and fiction? Where has it taken you?