Genealogy has had an oscillating presence in my life. Sometimes its fan blows straight at me and keeps me cool and comfy; sometimes it blows in another direction, and I just catch a slight waft of the gentle breeze. Over the years, it’s depended on the amount of time I’ve been able to invest in research.
Using local resources, like the New Castle-Henry County Public Library and the New Castle Historical Society, has been fruitful. I discovered my three-times great-grandmother’s framed license to practice medicine! I discovered that she and her sister Mary Jane were members of a local temperance organization and shared their own poetry in public.
Living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, over thirty years ago, I had a surprisingly first-class resource at my beck and call– as long as it was during library hours. The Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Center is among the top genealogy history libraries in the USA.
It was there that my mom and I traced our Holloway Quaker heritage back to the 1600’s in England. Quakers were notorious for keeping records of births, deaths, marriages, committee work, and even the names of members “read out of meeting” for their un-Quakerly behavior. Unfortunately, the specifics of those offenses were not generally noted, giving rise to great speculation. But to see three hundred years of Quaker history in my family tree was incredible. That’s quite a legacy! And just a little intimidating.
My Swander ancestors, on the other hand, trace their lineage back to Adam and Eve, according to the Swander minister who wrote our family history book that rests on my bookshelf. No need for Swanders to wonder about their forebears. Ha!
But I’m more interested in specific people and their lives, not just names, dates, and places, or references to my ancestors in Biblical stories. Perhaps that’s why my adventure with Mary Jane Edwards’ diary has had such a tight grip on me. MJ recorded her daily events and thoughts for the entire year of 1866. Her pen opened a window with a breeze that fans across me every time I open its text and am taken back to her winter and spring days as a teacher of freedmen in the Deep South or her summer and fall days on the family farm north of Raysville. I can learn about the books she read, the dresses she wore, the irritations and joys she felt, and what happened each time she attended Quaker meeting for worship. In doing so, I feel a real connection to MJ as a person, and as part of my gene pool.
Luckily, other resources can provide a similar peek into our ancestors’ lives. Sometimes without our even planning to find them!
Several weeks ago, I wrote a short article for the local historical society’s newsletter. My son is its editor, and he was lamenting the lack of submissions for this month’s issue. I told him that because our local Quaker meeting was in the process of selling its Gothic Revival meetinghouse, I would be glad to do some research and contribute an article about its construction and early days.
The first thing I did was google the history of the meeting as a refresher to firm up my memory. And what was my first hit? An article written by my own grandmother for a program to honor the eightieth birthday of the church building in 1988! It was packed with information.
Then I decided to find out more about some of the early members. Thanks to the availability and wide reach of Newspapers.com, I was able to quickly locate fascinating information about various members and pastors. One of the founding members of the meeting was a wealthy grocer turned dry goods warehouse owner, Joseph Goddard whose wife was a birthright Quaker in search of a meeting. Mary Goddard is credited with being the driving force behind the building at Adams and Charles Streets.
An article I happened across about Goddard’s lavish warehouse grand opening, when he rented Interurban cars to bring potential customers from all over East-Central Indiana boggled my mind. His public relations campaign was as impressive as any marketing efforts today. In addition to providing transportation to potential customers, Goddard awarded the visitors with ribbons commemorative of the day and offered tours of his new facility. Afterward, a parade welcomed the visitors, who then marched to a local event hall for an extravagant meal featuring exotic grocery items from Goddard’s warehouse.
But the rabbit hole of detailed information didn’t end there. The warren twisted and turned as I discovered and combined new keywords. The strangest part of the meetinghouse story connected to my family!
I had assumed that my family members were newcomers to Muncie when my grandfather was a teenager, leaving his Henry County roots behind.
Not true. In a newspaper article, I discovered that one of Goddard’s assistants was none other than the sickly baby mentioned in Mary Jane’s diary! Harlan Rayle, my second cousin, four-times removed! Or something like that. Anyway, it was two generations before my grandfather came to Muncie. Later, Rayle and Goddard went into business together!
Harlan took me down another rabbit hole, where I worked my way backward to other ancestors in MJ’s diary.
I discovered MJ’s youngest brother Milton was a breeder of Percheron horses! Those giant, proud draft horses with the long fetlocks. Several Henry County locals mentioned Milton’s colts as superb. I also learned Milton was a county commissioner and that he sorted out estates for many area residents, to the satisfaction of all parties. How fascinating to see how the young man who loved horses and studied bookkeeping in the diary grew up to be such a well-respected man of service to his community!
In the diary, David Edwards is MJ’s solid, quiet older brother who buys the brand-new reaper and runs the farm. As an adult, David was renowned for his mental acumen. In his obituary, he was praised as having one of the best mathematical brains in the state! I also found the advertisement for David’s estate sale and learned that Harlan, David’s nephew, settled his Uncle David’s estate, along with my two-times great-grandmother Lizzie, Mary Jane’s sister, and my grandpa’s grandmother. Harlan also served in county politics.
These details and connections stoke my imagination and help me visualize actual people who fill in the gaps in my genealogical trees. With this knowledge about their passions and how they spent their time, I also have a firmer idea of where I come from.
Everyone is not blessed with a family diary that is decades old. But with the availability of new tools and search engines– even Google– we can all at least have a more specific idea of our ancestors’ daily lives. And with that understanding comes an appreciation of the struggles they faced and inspiration they can offer us today.
Google your relatives. Check out Newspapers.com. See what you might find out about your people!
