Genealogical Serendipity

SERENDIPITY: the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for

I believe in genealogical serendipity -- it's happened to me more than once. Today I'd like to take you on a trip back to the technologically different days of the year 2000 when serendipity came to me in a big way.

In 2000, there were no smart phones and no tablets. Most people used desktop computers, as laptops were expensive. PDAs like my Palm Pilot were more common and I had a pager. Remember pagers? If you did have a laptop, internet and e-mail access from a hotel meant using a slow dial-up connection. From our perspective in 2013, that seems like the technology middle-ages!

That year, I spent a week in a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in mid-December. Ice and snow turned driving into a nightmare. Waking to six inches of snow one gloomy morning, I opted to take a vacation day. The company computers were behaving nicely, and I had my work laptop and pager and cell phone if the boss needed me to dial in for a crisis.

How would I spend the next 16 hours? The vast wasteland of daytime TV was not attractive, especially with the hotel's limited channels. So I decided to trudge through personal e-mail folders and do some clean up.

You know all those e-mails you plan to read someday? The newsletters on crafting, genealogy, technology, business, or home design. Everyone wants to send us newsletters and they just pile up. I use filters on my e-mail -- behind the scenes Yahoo looks at the subject or the sender and drops new email into folders for me. I don't even see many newsletters unless I look at the folder.

That day I decided to just start at the newest genealogy newsletter and go back in time. I opened one, skimmed it, checked any interesting links, then deleted it. Rinse and repeat. After just a few, I saw an item that stopped me.

A gentleman named Jeff had created a website that was an electronic copy of an old family book on the Pefley family. Hmmm. I had seen that name before. I looked at the family tree that I carried in my Palm Pilot and there it was. A family member (a collateral line) had married a Pefley. I did want to find the death and burial information for the parents of Mary Hannah Bosseck Pefley.

These books on a particular surname are very hit and miss, but I had time. That slow dial-up made the website unusable. I e-mailed Jeff and he kindly sent me a copy in Word format right away.

Paydirt 

I searched for the name Bosseck inside the book and was puzzled at the first find.

• [person] 663 -- Elizabeth Rettinger (dau. of No. 7) married ... Christian Peter Bosseck (see No. 1424). Issue ... Mary Hannah Bosseck ... (Perhaps others).

Wait a minute. Why is Elizabeth Rettinger in here as a daughter of someone and where are all the other Bosseck children? I'm just looking for information on Mary and her husband. I remember my utter bafflement. I searched for the next match on Bosseck.

• [person] 1424 -- George Mangus Pefley (son of No. 1324) married ... Mary Hannah Bosseck ... (see No. 663) ...

My head was spinning. I went back and forth between the two, the only references to Bosseck in the book. Finally I took out a piece of paper and started to draw a bit of a tree, following the son of ... and daughter of ... links to parents and beyond.

The Tree Grows

When I reached the top, I was amazed. I had five new generations to add to my tree. I, myself, was a descendant of Nicholas Pefley, person number one in the book. Mary had married her second cousin once removed!

I had not been looking for anything other than where Mary had died so that I could find her grave and maybe an obituary. I was looking simply for the graves of her parents, my 4th great-grandparents.

Not only did the book provide a place of death for Mary and five new generations, it also yielded a Revolutionary war veteran (DAR-worthy) and an understanding of the ethnic and religious roots of this Swiss-German branch of my family, along with their migration patterns.

I visited Mary's grave in eastern Kansas the following year. The graves of her parents, my ancestors, are two markers away from hers.

Pefley photo courtesy of Julie Wollard Trout. Recollections digital kit by Joanne Brisebois Designs for Digital Scrapper (formerly Scrapper's Guide)

 

 

The Cycle Continues

I added Mary's husband's ancestors to my database, as well as my own ancestors. That recently paid off. I was able to suggest this book to another person to further their research on one of George Pefley's ancestors named Graybill.

Thanks to a miserable snow day and a genealogy newsletter, serendipity brought me a book I would likely have never looked at otherwise. And serendipity allowed me to pass it on when I saw the name Graybill and the location Ladoga, Indiana, in the tree of another researcher.

Watch for those gifts -- I know the universe has some for each of us.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy, Week 9, Cemeteries

Cemeteries are not often featured in my heritage scrapbook pages. However, I’ll share a couple of ways I’ve included them. First, I invite you to join me on a trip to my favorite cemetery.

A Visit to Kansas

You’re standing on a rise in south-central Kansas on a warm September day. A sea of golden-brown flows to the horizon in all directions. Trees dot the landscape where distant farmhouses rise from the empty fields. The unfettered prairie wind tugs at your hair and whistles in your ears. In the distance, a freight train rolls westward, while cars scurry along the state highway that divides the small town below you. Suddenly deer appear, bounding through nearby fields, and you watch them until they vanish in the distance. Some local farm boys drive past, hauling a load of hay. They wave and call out a greeting, leaving a dust cloud hanging over the dirt road.

Slowly you enter the tiny cemetery, admiring the intricate metal crosses that adorn the top of the fence rail. The grass is calf-high, but dry and dormant. You fervently hope there are no snakes as you walk towards the few visible markers, drawn to a double marker with the inscriptions Mother and Father. You trace the words, reading “Sarah died in 1892 and Aaron died in 1909”. Staring out across the endless prairie, you realize this is the very land they walked, the view they saw, the wind they felt. Little has changed in 120 years. The neighbors have exchanged their wagons for automobiles and a few roads have been paved. This place is unchanged and you feel their closeness here, as nowhere else.

You turn to leave, acknowledging the rest of the family: John with his Civil War marker and Effie and George with their large double stone. You bid them good-bye, along with the rest of the permanent residents of this little piece of the Kansas prairie.

Kansas background by Scrapbook Customs

Cemetery Thoughts
 

I haven’t shared the name of the family, the cemetery or the town. The vandalism that happens in cemeteries is unconscionable and I do not want to put this small and precious place at any more risk than it already faces.

This cemetery and other small rural cemeteries are a part of the fabric of the lives of the nearby residents. When I visit such a cemetery, I feel grounded in the place. A large or city cemetery feels to me less connected to the locality and more like any cemetery in any place.

Scrapping Cemetery Photos
 

I prefer to put photos of people in my heritage scrapbook pages, rather than places or things. I’ve used cemetery and tombstone photos in only two ways. One is to document a trip or visit to a cemetery, as I’ve done with the cemeteries in this Kansas county. The second is as a substitute for a photo of a person.

My grandfather’s elder brother died at age 16. There are no known photos of his face other than as a young boy. Even his marker displays his little-boy photo. This layout shows the faces of the people who appear in the group photo, but in later years of their lives. Gilbert Allee is instead represented by his marker.
 

Club Scrap Autumn Splendor paper kit

They Made the Markers

Digital Collection, Fall Carnival blog train, Sep 2010

I also have an unusual reason to feature grave markers on a layout. My fourth cousin's ancestors were the premier makers of monuments in their area of northwestern Pennsylvania. I commemorated our visit to their family plot and other cemeteries. The most memorable monument we visited sits in the town square of Clarion, PA, to commemorate the Civil War.

I hope this has inspired your own thoughts about whether and when to include cemetery photos in your heritage layouts.