A Start

The ripples of actions taken a thousand years in the past tie threads across time and distance. Peace, war, famine, disease, depression, a successful business, a wasted fortune, a moment's passion, careful legislation, or a cruel royal fiat. Decisions both conscious and subconscious; sleeping in or waking early from a dog's bark. A chance meeting of young people at a church social, a town square, or a remote country road with the courses of their lives unwritten and full of promise. 

Whether you realize it or not, the confluence of these threads is your story. The course of your life, the features of your personality, your perspectives and experiences, your very existence, everything that makes you, has context written across generations. Few of us know more than a few sentences.

Nonetheless, many of us try to connect the patchwork of our family stories together, for reasons clear or opaque. Sometimes it’s easy, more often very hard. Inference is sometimes as much a tool as documented fact. You might pull a thread for days, weeks, or years only to prove out as only peripheral or unconnected lint. Yet the time is not wasted, because we learn and sometimes help others piece together their stories. Genealogy and family history is so much more than birthdates, census records, and gravestones. Each person whose existence led to ours had a life beyond cold, yellowing documents; the mundane daily decisions and struggles, hopes, fears, loves, and loss that make a person whole. This is what fascinates me, for the sum total of these things over time plays a direct role on who I am today, and what I will pass on to others by my small, humble threads.

I have had a vague interest in family history since I was small, listening to my grandfather tell stories about his German grandfathers and the immigrant community where he grew up in Northeast Iowa. It remained a vague interest until March, 2020 when my healthcare job became literally all-consuming. On the 30^th of that month my first child, a son, was born in a hospital that had been emptied in anticipation of a deluge of pandemic patients. In July my dad lost his 4 year battle with cancer. Emotionally and physically drained, exhausted, and overwhelmed with a sense of loss, I was searching for meaning and a way to someday tell my son who his grandpa was, his place in the world, and how a grandpa he didn't remember would affect his life's path.

I found the beginning of an answer in some of my dad’s files and his nascent Ancestry.com account. Aware his earthly journey was approaching its end, he had started searching for his place as well. The German side of his family was well-documented thanks to the efforts of his cousin, a nun who had picked up the work from her aunt of the same religious order. His Irish side was mostly a mystery that he was driven to solve. I start the search where he left off.

In the ensuring moths, my project expanded to include my wife’s family and I found I could also help some some in-laws and friends find their stories. The work was mostly done on nights and weekends, and writing down stray thoughts on PostIt notes.  A lifetime could be spent dedicated to this effort without reaching what might be considered a satisfactory solution. I also learned how important it is make sure documenting your past's story doesn't keep you from writing yours in the now. 

The findings are sometimes staggering. The oldest ancestor I have found in my line is a 16^th great-grandfather from England; my wife’s is a 31^st (or maybe 32^nd) great-grandfather from Scotland, both were noblemen whose wealth unfortunately did not trickle down to younger sons and daughters. All the more interesting to me are the farmers, laborers, soldiers and sailors, and full-time parents whose more modest stories nonetheless the are of equal import to mine. Like most Americans, my ancestors were all immigrants, most of them were poor with few opportunities, and many of them were escaping horrific situations at home. This work can give you a new perspective on what that means for the world around you; the world has not changed nearly so much as we’d like to believe.

Despite my best efforts I’ve made relatively little progress on my father’s personal Irish background. Though not impossible, the genealogy of working and farming-class Irish Catholics of the 19^th Century or earlier is notoriously difficult. The joy, though, is in the chase, and with this blog I’ll be writing occasionally about that chase and sharing some of the stories I learn along the way.

Maybe you can help me, or better yet, perhaps I can help you. I’m not a professional family historian and never will be, and I’m subject to the same weaknesses and errors as anyone else trying to make sense of faded historical documents in languages I don’t speak, but I try to call this out whenever I’m aware. If you think we might somehow be connected, or just want to share ideas or perspectives, please reach out. I’d love to talk and to learn.

If you made it this far, thank you. Wishing you all the best and a better year in 2022.

Matt Hanley

Rochester, Minnesota, USA – Saturday, January 15, 2022