The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
SAVING THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE
Keeping your history alive: Genealogist’s talk will teach tips, tricks of recreating a family tree
MIDDLETOWN >> A simple question 19 years ago got Marian B. Wood bitten by the genealogy bug.
“Who are these old, dead people?” was the question, which won’t likely be asked about her when she’s gone.
Wood, now known for her expertise in the topic, will present a workshop Saturday at the Godfrey Memorial Library, “Planning a Future for Your Family’s Past,” during which she’ll teach participants — those researching their ancestry and those who may soon begin after the presentation — to organize and safeguard genealogical research and materials.
But in 1998, the college textbook author and now avid family history researcher wanted to find out where her grandfa-
ther was buried.
“There was no one alive for me to ask, everyone was long gone, so the logical place was New York City, where he lived, but I had no success in finding the records,” Wood said.
So she called the New York City Vital Records Department. What the clerk there told her reads more like a movie than something that would occur in real life — but it did.
“‘Did you ever think he maybe didn’t die in New York and that maybe he died in a place like Washington, D.C.?’” the woman on the other end of the line asked Wood.
“They didn’t own the records but knew, I found out later, that he died very suddenly in D.C. of a heart attack. Someone had filed records with the (New York) department of health when he was buried,” Wood said, which is why the office wasn’t permitted to pass along the information it didn’t have purview over.
Wood said that, soon after, she paid for a records search within a certain range of years.
“Voila! There he was!,” said the effusive Wood, thrilled by her discovery.
The Southbury resident had herself a mystery. It was a burning one she felt was impossible to resist.
“I wanted to know why in Washington, and who are these people?” who owned the home where he died so many years ago, she said.
“My grandma’s sister said (Wood’s grandfather) was visiting his brother-in-law and sister-in-law in D.C. and suffered a heart attack,” she said. “What drives me is trying to figure out who these people were.”
So she searched for the marriage certificate of her distant relatives who lived in the house where her grandfather died.
“Imagine how traumatizing that must have been,” Wood said, marveling at her grandfather’s visit. “What’s more shocking is, 15 years later, I was visiting my cousin on that side of the family who handed me a photo. I didn’t know who they were, but the date on the back was the day before my grandfather died.”
“My hair just stood up. Where was this and why was it saved all these years?”
The people in the photo were strangers to her — walking down a street in D.C.
“If I didn’t do genealogy, this would be just another face on the street,” Wood said. “Just think of all the stories and all the drama out there for us to find.”
Wood began wondering, when she first began looking into her family tree, what would happen to the photos, documents and records that she’s accumulated over these 19 years.
“Will they end up on eBay or in a Dumpster somewhere?” she thought.
Compared to years past, discovering one’s family history is much easier with innovations such as new software that makes research a much less onerous and droll exercise, said Godfrey Memorial Library Executive Director Beth Mariotti.
“Now it’s so easy, you can go online and get stuff that’s so important and sometimes you can find the original documents,” she said.
When she went to the last New England Regional Genealogical Consortium, Mariotti said she saw a lot of young people who became interested through the internet, something she finds heartening.
“As you get older, you think about what are you leaving. It’s part of aging, getting older, you look at the generations behind you,” she said. “Before it was much more time-consuming, you really had to do it by mail, send things, and it would be fruitful or not. Imagine doing (an ancestral tree) with typewriters,” Mariotti said.
Wood’s talk Saturday will explain a process for which she’s coined an acronym — PASS: Prepare and organize material, allocate ownership, set up a genealogical “will” and share it with heirs.
Wood suggests people put photos into acid-free archival envelopes, and, just as importantly, write a caption on the outside “so even if it’s just a name and an approximate date, that’s a head start,” she said.
By allocating ownership, she means giving some portion of the memorabilia and records to family members who should have them — “some might go to siblings, cousin or other people, some can go to the Godfrey if they have historical significance, like an old yearbook from a Connecticut school,” Wood said.
That does take discipline, however. The giving away part, that is.
“Really, it’s about sharing my family with other parts of my family. The act of keeping all these ancestors — by sharing military badges, photos — I’m keeping their story and memory alive, honoring them by giving it away. If it has value for historical reasons, I may want it in a museum,” she said.
The cover of Wood’s book has antique family photographs, an Ellis Island passenger list and a triplestrand pearl bracelet.
“Everyone on the cover of my book has a story and I actually know the stories so the next generation will know why did I save a pearl bracelet,” she said. “I actually have a photo of my mom wearing it when she was 5. Just think of what I’ve learned — it will go down in my family with a story so someone will know this was your great-grandmother.”
Preserving one’s personal history is an act of heroism, said Wood, whose ancestors came from eastern Europe.
“Honor them by not just mentioning they died here — they had adventures, they came to America, some things went well and some things didn’t. If we tell the story, we are a stronger family, we can thrive,” she said. “We owe it to people who came here with a dream.”
What one finds in one’s family tree “runs the gamut of drama — stories happy and sad, but we have to tell them all,” Wood said.
Participants, who will have time after Saturday’s presentation to research at the library, are advised to bring a laptop. The talk begins at 9:30 a.m. at Godfrey Memorial Library, 134 Newfield St. It is free to Godfrey premium members or $10 a session. No preregistration is necessary. Call 860-3464375 for information.