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Thursday, June 28th, 2007
As a Father’s Day gift for my dad, I spent weekend before last wrangling the information I’ve gathered about our family for the past few years into what I hoped would be a cohesive, easy-to-view family tree.
I found a large parchment-like family tree template with room for up to nine generations of names, dates and whatever else you can squeeze on it, all arranged in a fan around a circle in which you write the name of the central figure – in this case my dad.
I’ve got Word doc after Word doc of information – a different one for each branch of the family, and as you can imagine, the further back you go, the more branches you have. I’ve had more success with some branches than others, but still I thought I’d fill up most of the tree.
But when I settled in at the kitchen table with my laptop, my “parchment” and my archival black pen, it quickly became clear that there would be a lot of blank space on the semi-circle of our family history.
For one thing, my dad’s mother – my Gran Gran – only met her father once and knew nothing about his family, or nothing she passed on to Dad anyway. So that whole slice of the pie is – and probably will remain – completely blank.
Then there are Gran’s grandparents, who each had incredibly popular names for their time, making them hard to track down. Who knew Nina (pronounced with a long “I”) was such a big hit in South Carolina in 1888?
So beyond the third generation, the maternal side of the tree was empty.
I had more luck on the paternal side, with one branch traced back to the late 1700s in Georgia and another traced (by someone else, so I don’t entirely trust it yet) back to the late 1600s in Germany.
But I’ve run into plenty of dead ends and mysteries over there, too – for example, who in hell was Eliza Patrick’s father?!
I presented the tree to dad anyway, promising an update one day in the future. I think I’ve hit the end of the what the Internet can tell me, at least for now (more and more archives are added all the time), and will have to venture into the unpleasant world of real-life records offices and courthouses. Yuck.
I don’t know when I’ll have time for all that, but there is one more thing I can do – persuade Dad to get a DNA test. His last name – and my maiden name – is Lambert, and there’s a professor at Northwestern who’s doing a DNA study of the surname in the United States. By comparing genetic markers of male descendants, Professor Joseph Lambert has already established there are several entirely separate Lambert families in the U.S.
I’m fairly sure we belong to Group B, descendants of Revolutionary War soldier James Lambert, who moved into Burke County, Georgia, from parts unknown. His descendant James (grandson? grandnephew? I haven’t found that official link yet – no Daughters of the Revolution for me) moved with his wife and many children to Washington County, Alabama, in the 1830s, and the Lamberts’ love affair with the Gulf Coast was born.
Dad will have to pay for a DNA test and send a cheek swap to the lab to be analyzed. That would confirm whether we belong to Group B or Group A (who came from North Carolina and lived in a nearby county in Georgia) … or if he doesn’t match either, it could even indicate some funny business back among our ancestors!
Dad seems interested – he’s always been a history buff, which is probably why I am, too – but I’ll have to be persistent because he’ll never take the initiative on his own.
Whether it helps us fill in the family tree or not, it’s certainly an interesting project, and I love the idea of contributing to it.
You know me – I hate change and letting go of the past. I’m a girl who is still hanging on to the first hideous shirt she wore on her first date with her first boyfriend.
Imagine how it pains me to think of letting the names fade away of all these generations of people who contributed their DNA to make up mine and sacrificed to raise the children that would raise the children that would raise me.
They may have been giant assholes for all I know, but I still wish I could meet them.
For example, Dad told me that what we fondly call “the Lambert crazy” – a tendency to be quick-tempered, self-centered and demanding – actually comes from my great-great-grandmother Nina Turner, who was sarcastically nicknamed “Saint Nina.” She passed the crazy to Gran Gran, who passed it on to all her children, who passed it to their children (including me and my sister). Those are some strong crazy genes!
It’s probably crazy, too, that I wish I’d known Saint Nina. She died a few years before my birth, but I wish I’d known her, if only so I could see in living color the saturated version of the Lambert crazy – the root of the poisonous plant.
I wish I had the chance to do what I sometimes do with my living relatives – watch them move and speak and interact, and wonder – am I really like them?
And then, with a mix of horror and pride, realize the answer is a resounding, inescapable YES.
I am sure you have already tried this…. but have you checked census records. If you know Gran-Gran’s full name and her age, you may be able to locate her on a census….Helpful if she had any older siblings as well (or younger provided that they were born at census time). This stuff fascinates me, and I have been digging a TON on my own family. You can get a free trial membership to ancestry.com and then search the census that way…..and they scanned in the origionl pages…..kinda neat to see…Let me know how it comes out…or if I can help any…..I could use a good project to keep me occupied…..
I didn’t make it clear in earlier post….but if you find her at say 8 years old, chances are she was living with her parents then you can find names…..Also many states have online searches for birth certificates so you could get the parents names off of that….
Kristen, I found your post very interesting because I, too, have struggled with researching my husband’s family. I was always interested in geneology because my brother has done a great amount of research on my family. When my daughter was born, however, I became interested in researching the Tackert name for her benefit. Here’s the problem: Gary’s great grandfather disappearred on a train going from Houston to Washington DC. He was supposedly on his way there to register a patent on something he invented. It’s possible he met with foul play somewhere along the way. Therefore, there is no death certificate. His wife married two more times after this, and Gary’s grandfather, Al, never knew his father. There are really no more “Tackerts” anywhere besides our family. We believe that perhaps the great grandmother changed her last name from possibly Tacker or Tackett to protect her from the people who may have killed her husband. This may be a mystery I never solve!
I actually have a membership to Ancestry.com. A lot of the census records (or transcripts of them) are available elsewhere for free, but I haven’t found anywhere with quite as many records or such an easy search system. I love looking at the census records and trying to find clues. On the census you can see that some of my ancestors lived next door to the people they later married. Another of my favorites is the World War I draft cards. Men of a very wide age range were required to register for the draft, so there are records for most of my male relatives who were alive at the time. The coolest part is that the cards specify height, build, hair color and eye color – so even though I don’t have a photo of my great-great-grandfather Will, I know he was tall and slim with red hair! :)
A search for James Lambert does not have to be one that is overwhelming and exhausting. There are several ways to find someone who served during the Revolutionary War. None of these have been mentioned but they are worth search time spent. The spouses, children and other people who were associated with the Revolutionary War veterans frequently also have a paper trail.
Finding James Lambert should not be that extroadinary to accomplish. Aside from census, there are several ways to search for this veteran from the Revolutionary War. If he or anyone that he knew applied for his pension, that would provide additional clues. There are also several ways to find those who have lived in the past pages of history. What to search for depends upon when and where they lived at.
The real world of record offices and courthouses can be more intriguing than realized. Putting together several records for someone from the past is a way to make them come alive so that they can move, speak and interact.
Anyone searching for answers for their family history can contact me at shannoninpapertrails@yahoo.com .
I’m a huge fan of ancestry.com and what you can find in the comfort of your own home on the Internet at odd hours. Love the WWI draft records! Did you also take advantage of the WWII records that were free at the end of May/early June on Ancestry? We have some maddening dead ends in my family too (grandfather raised in an orphanage) but a tidbit here and there together with the internet stuff can make the cemetery/courthouse, etc. searches less tedious. Of course, this all helps too when you’re trying to put a “face” on the people who built your house.
Great minds….I’ve got a family history post I’ve been meaning to get up, too. I just went through a ton of files that my mom has compiled over the years, and have been augmenting them with the wonders of the Internet and an Ancestry.com free trial. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into family history before about 10 years ago.
My great grandfather was of medium build, with brown hair and blue eyes!