A Return To Letter Writing

I used to write letters all the time, at least a letter a day, but over the years I have gotten away from that practice. However, I have been writing a lot of letters lately for both good and not so pleasant reasons. As you have read, there are a number of correspondences that I have sent to management but there have also been a few that I have written for other reasons. It seems as though email and phone calls have become more of an annoyance for some so reverting back to a more traditional form of communication may provide more substantial results.

While I send a fair amount of snail mail as Secretary of my masonic lodge, which there seems to be a lot of this summer, the other pieces of mail have a much different purpose. I have taken a considerable amount of time off from doing the in depth genealogical research and now, as I previously mentioned, we are at a point when on line resources are not going to provide the additional information that we are looking for. There are a few things that come up here and there as archives are digitized but that still leaves us wanting more.

So, the first letter I wrote was to the Monacan Nation as it is now time to pursue membership in the tribe. Basically, there is a question as to how far back we need to provide documentation. Do we need to prove connection to those on the original rolls or do we need documentation of those individuals? It may seem like a small question but it has tremendous ramifications… one generation makes all the difference as the documents needed for that final step have gone missing from the archive in which they are stored. We will have to wait and see if this is going to be easy (as we have all the documents needed) or hard (and we need to find out where that one document is being stored).

Another piece of mail dropped off at the post office was to a woman living in Spring City, Pennsylvania. She is a descendant of my great grandfather and his second wife. While my grandmother wanted nothing to do with her father or her half-sister, it is time for the family to know more about that forgotten branch. I outlined the research and explained why I am reaching out in the letter but there is still no guarantee as to whether or not I will get a response. Frankly, I am not 100% certain that I am writing to the right person but all of the supporting information seems to make sense. After all, if I am correct, she is still living in the same house that my great grandfather lived in.

Next up will be pulling together all the information needed for the Sons of the American Revolution application. While I have all the documents needed, and then some, this is still going to be a project and a half. The work has already been done it is simply a matter of sending it in such a way as to speed up the approval process. It will be nice to finally have this off my plate after a year languishing on my to-do list.

So that is the plan at the moment. This, combined with whatever my aunt and uncle can find out during their upcoming trip to Virginia, will hopefully fill in a few gaps in the tree. Until then, I think I will find a few more people I can write, email, and call. And, of course, get a lot of editing done on the tree as it is looking a little ragged and is in dire need of pruning.

Filling In The Foliage In The Family Tree

The most recent addition to the family research...
the final resting place of Laura Belle Redcross and Marcellus Nickolas Love.

Over the weekend I spent some time talking with the other genealogist in the family, my aunt, about the impasse that we are now facing. We have both spent the last several years working on the family tree trying to fill in the leaves, trim the branches, and follow the roots as far as they will go. We are now at a point where all of the information that can be found online has been found, catalogued, and added to our tree. We are at a point when it is going to take a considerable increase in effort in order to achieve even the smallest of results…. traveling and physically searching for documents.

While that is a huge part of the ongoing work that we need to get done there is also a completely different task which we need to accomplish. For much of the family we have the documents, the lineage, the connections from A to B, and we know of events that occurred in their lives. However, there really is no narrative that has been written on each of the generations to give us some color and fill in what was happening not only in their lives but also what was happening in the world around them. Facts can only tell you so much. The story is what makes the person, for lack of an original term, come to life.

While you have all read about Jacob Wirth and his death aboard the USS Tecumseh which I wrote about back in November, I haven’t really done the work to tell some of the other interesting stories from the tree. Sure there have been plenty of lists like the ones I have compiled for the Sons of the American Revolution and outlining connections to the Monacan Indian Nation, I haven’t done my job as a story teller in recreating the lives, connections, and service in the family. And there are so many beyond those few that have previously been listed.

Sometimes it’s not about the events in their lives, sometimes it’s about the lives that they lived. While those lives may seem unremarkable to many, they are part of what made this family and guided us along the way. What if my grandfather never moved the family up to Pennsylvania from the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia? What if Samuel Ardis lived past 28 years old? What if my great grandparents never divorced? What if each of the immigrants just decided to stay put?

Obviously, we will ever know the real answers to the hypothetical questions. We will also never know if the stories we tell are completely accurate. But we can at least attempt to breathe life back into our ancestors and try to better understand the lives that they lived, the hardships they faced, and the decisions that they were forced to make. This should be interesting.