Simple questions often lead
to the most interesting stories
Family Searcher
By Nina Brawn
I think one of the best ways to do get closer to your family is through genealogy.
The more people you talk with, the more you understand how much we all have in common, no matter how different our lives seem. As I talked to little-known relatives, I became closer to them, and it was easier to make those bonds stronger.
Piecing together the life stories of my grandmothers, I began to see how difficult their lives must have been, partially for the individualities of their personal lives, but also for the times in which they lived and how that affected their lives as women. My Italian grandmother was born in Italy and married here in America. She married a successful barber/surgeon who was quite influential in the background politics of Meriden, Connecticut. She raised her stepson and eight children of her own. She also ran a market, and a tavern attached to the family home, and rented rooms to boarders. She bore a tremendous burden, which shows much too clearly in the difference between her engagement photo, and one taken about 20 years later. She was clearly a strong woman, but her strength was developed for the needs her family, not a personal strength. She died from a stroke at the age of 52. I wonder if that was because of the difficult life she lived, which was imposed upon her by her native culture, and was not relieved by 19th century American neighborhood life.
My Irish grandmother, Nana, was strong in a different way. Nana was raised by an American-born Irish woman who was twice widowed, and who began her professional life in her teens. Nana grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, having survived the polio outbreak which killed her stepfather and which left her with a damaged foot. Nana worked both before and after her marriages, and basically supported my grandfather who lived in Maine for most of their marriage. She too carried many burdens for her family, but they were imposed more by her own choice rather than cultural demands. Nana was strong, and independent, and I hear, was a happier woman.
I call upon their stories and those of others in my family to remind me that I am not alone in whatever I am feeling. Someone whose blood runs through my veins has probably survived something similar; or something much worse. I have a great deal to be grateful for, and I know it more now than I did before I studied my family’s past.
Take the opportunity that genealogy offers to get to know the lives of others. Talk to relatives that you have avoided. Ask questions of close relatives you already know well; they don’t have to be awkward or scary questions. They can be simple questions, it’s amazing what your interest will bring to your life, and give to theirs. Start the year out fresh, resolution or not, ready to take on what life gives you, stronger because of the people that got you here.
Editor’s note: Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft, who has been doing genealogy for over 30 years, is a freelance genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader e-mails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com. The Aroostook County Genealogical Society meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at the Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center, 163 Van Buren Road, Caribou, at 6:30 p.m. Guests and prospective members are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501.
