Kevin’s Story, Part 31, Fire Department Volunteer

Some little boys are interested in family history, some want to grow up and be a soldier or a policeman, most want to be just like there dad, I wanted to be a fireman.  In the 1950's those that served their country were honored above all.  The next best thing was serving your community.  As a little boy, all I saw was the glitz and glamour of being a fireman.  I could imagine myself climbing that 30 foot ladder grabbing that little kid, putting them over my shoulder and taking them to safety.  Or holding onto that fire hose and saving a house.

With friends devoting there lives to the fire department I understand what it means to serve.  When they serve there whole family serves.  They don’t get a lot of high fives from the community like I thought they would.  Maybe a nod on the forth of July when they blow the horn of the fire engine.  Our dedicated firemen are just unbelievable.  No way I could fill their shoes.  We took a group of young boys down to the local fire department for a tour ten years ago.  The kids got way more than a tour, they got to see what a fireman’s life is like.  At the end of the tour they got out the sixty foot ladder truck and showed us how they fight a fire on a high rise.  Each and every firemen had that glint in the eye that I must have had at five years old.  Every time we dial 911, they come flying in the door ready to help.  The whole emergency response team shows up at the door in less than five minutes.

To all of you that give so much so that we can have a better life, we are thankful that your dream came true.

Kevin’s Story, Part 26, The Fly Boy

Maggie did not have it easy.  Of course taking care of a child that minds perfectly should be simple but the big boy, who weighed all most as much as his Mom, was not very healthy.  The doctor wrote; he was hospitalized for eight days on Jun 17, 1958 for possible Rheumatic Fever.  At that time low grade temperature elevated se. rate 27 mg. Per. Grade 1 cystoloc murmur was heard-maximum at 4th left interspace-tonsils were enlarged not injected, cervical glands were small.  Following hospital discharge he came down with acute tonsilitis which responded to penicillin.  He was considered a potential Rheumatic Fever suspect and treated accordingly with limited activity.  ECG taken,  showed evidence of Myocarditis.  He had an episode of Bronchitis in September of 1958 which responded to TAO Suspension.  He also was given HesperC liquid as a prophylactic against respiratory infection.  Heart murmur remained unchanged.  Tonsils enlarged somewhat moderately.  B. L. Shapero M. D.  Thanks doc you fixed me.

This was starting to get expensive.  Then of course were the doctor visits she would have to be making for herself soon.  There was another one on the way.  See, she had met this fly boy. Let’s go back a year.

She worked at Dow Airfield and there were a lot of pilots flying in and out.  She happened to meet one that was not in the service but flew for a Government contractor.  His job was to wait for a prototype part to come to the cold country for testing.  They had to install the parts in real conditions before they were certified to go into production.  So the fly boy would install the part and then test it in actual flight conditions.  He would travel to New Foundland, Iceland, and Greenland testing parts and then return.  The fly boy got a glimpse of the auburn hair and there was no turning back.  Must have been the little boy that sealed the deal because they would stay together for the rest of there lives.  The fly boy had a family, and it would soon be growing.

Continued . . . . .

Kevin’s Story, Part 25, The Window

Let’s back up just a couple years, maybe to 1954, continued from Part 4 posted in April.  News was in the newspaper and on the radio.  Television was becoming more affordable.  You could pick up a brand new 19" black and white set for about $150.00.  The median household income was about $5,000.00 per year, so not everyone was lining up to buy a new set.   However, if you worked for a television shop you got a discount and it wasn’t long before Maggie’s Dad got a new set.  He would have just a few months of TV watching before he went to meet his maker.  By then Maggie had bigger challenges.  She was going to have to share the news that she was in trouble.

Three big brothers, there wives, step Mom, sister, Aunts and Uncle’s.  The consensus of opinion, adoption.  In 1954 girls did not become pregnant.  They went on holiday to some far away place and came back six months later like nothing had happened.  (Sidebar; [I got that from the OJ trial], we did not understand the mental damage that giving up a child for adoption would cause in the 1950's.  It wasn’t until abortion was legalized and we found out about the life long mental damage it caused that we looked at how hard it was to give up a child for adoption.)  You can imagine that I favor anything but abortion.  If you are on Facebook, search for the +9 group.  I should be the poster child because my Mom could have gone the easy way with an abortion or give me up for adoption.  It was much harder on a female then.  The right to chose is much easier the day you chose than living with the choice forever.  If you find it difficult living with a choice you made, please seek help from your church or pregnancy resource center in your area.

I am thankful that Maggie chose life for me.  It would take Maggie another 18 months before she could take me home.  She gave everything she had during those 18 months to make a home.  Back then you did not get a reward check every month for having a child you could not take care of.  Women did not have many options for work that paid enough to support a family.  Maggie found a job as a ward clerk at the Governments Dow Air Field hospital.  She found a one bedroom apartment in downtown Bangor and got to work by bus.  She would break that kid out of foster care and raise him by herself with no help from anybody.

Think back to when you were two years old.  Do you have any memories that far back?  I have one thing I can remember.  I must have been two years old and must have been in trouble.  I was required to stay on Mom’s big bed (I guess that was a time out) and take a nap.  I was not allowed to get off the bed for any reason.  (You may not have the whole picture.  It’s Bangor Maine, in the fall, cold breezy day, maybe in the 40's) Mom puts down the laundry basket, bends over grabs the latch on each side of the window, gives it everything a 5 foot 2 inch girl can give and the window finally comes up about 2 feet.  She grabs the laundry basket, bends over like a girl jumping hurtles, climbs out the window onto the roof.  I don’t ever remember being able to go outside that window and play.  I can’t see my Mom from my position on the bed.  I slowly and quietly lean over, , , , more, , , , a little bit more, , , , can’t see anything, , , more, , , oops.  I jump to my feet and try to get back on the bed but I can’t climb that thing because the bedspread pulls down when I pull up.  (I may have been vertically challenged then but I had plenty of weight) The bedspread on the floor and I have no way up on the bed.  I’m in trouble but, Mom didn’t yell yet???  Well since I’m down on the floor anyway, I slowly and quietly make my way over to the window.  Maybe I could go out and play with Mom.  I slowly peek around the window molding and see my Mom hanging up clothes.  ON THE ROOF?  This looks like a lot of fun so, being the good helper that I am, I throw a leg over the window ledge and the next 60 seconds is probably why I remember the story.

Continued . . . . .

Kevin’s Story, Part 19, Another What #2?

brother.

Well I only have one younger brother.  Talk about torment, how did that kid ever make it through childhood.  Well if this new brother is anything like the little brother, I will really be blessed.

He passed away in 1986.  Damn.

He was 25 years older than you, and very successful.  He had a construction company that built roads, housing developments, and anything else he could get his hands into.  I think I should have met him 25 years ago, maybe he could have taught me how to run a successful business.

Yes he was married, lived in Connecticut and has a great family.  There are kids and grandkids, and great grand kids.  “Do you want all there names?”  I’m feeling like I’m coming to the end of this story so I turn over the 3 by 5 paper and start writing on the back.  He had a daughter then a son three years later.  The son passed away though. (very sad face, two family members that I will not get to meet.)  Then he got re-married and had a girl, then another girl, then another girl, then a couple boys.  My paper, poor penmanship, and the holes due to the pencil are very sad.  As I’m writing I''m looking around the truck for the next scrap of paper, because I’m not going to fit all these names.

If you have ever worked on ancestry.com you know how valuable the information, spelling, and dates really are.  I am trying to get everything down.  Still focusing on the construction company part as I’m writing.  My hero, and I never got to shake his hand.

So I get it all down, I'm fixin’ to take a breath, need to say good buy before the battery dies, but before I open my mouth she says;

And you have another . . . . Oh my!  Now I know what my bio-dad’s calling was.

To Be Continued . . . . . . .

Kevin’s Story, Part 17, The Call

Ring....Ring.....Ring....

This is Kevin

This is your sister.

pause . . . . (while I pull over with out wrecking the truck)

She tells me this story; when I was little, you and I were playing together, and I overheard all the Aunts saying “Wow they look just alike”.  I was at your Uncles house and we were playing in the front room.  I remembered that and asked my Mom one day.  Do I have a brother?  Mom said; “Yeeuup” (That’s Maine talk for yes)

(How is it that the whole world knows I’m adopted but I don’t?)
She continues; twenty years ago we were getting ready to have a family reunion and I tried to get in touch with you.  I contacted your Mom.  (Oh?)  She talked me out of contacting you at the time.   (Oh?)

Later, as I was putting pieces of the puzzle together, I thought back to a phone call I made to my Mom as I was traveling on the East coast.  I drove from Virginia to Maine.  As I entered my birth town I realized I didn’t know what to look at, what to take a picture of.

Mom, where did we live, where was I born, do you want me to take any pictures while I’m here?  I don’t remember the answers but that must have made her very uncomfortable about the secret.  I’m sorry for that.

Big sister and I talked for about 30 seconds (actually about an hour and a half) before I said my battery was getting ready to die.  Damn cell phones.

Then she says, oh by the way, you have another

To Be Continued . . . . . . .

Kevin’s Story, Part 15, The secret

The family decides to divulge the secret.

The unknown?  It’s like a drug!  I don’t mean the 1960's kind of drug, I mean after you get a taste you can’t stop kinda drug.  With each answer, I had a hundred more questions.  You hear stories of people looking for there families to get money, or don’t try to find family because they are afraid they will take there money.  Most, I believe, just want to know about where they came from.  The first thing that popped into mind; “Maybe I have a brother or sister.”  I tend to be more of a steam roller and barge right in shaking hands person.  Not the kinda guy that asks permission to meet the bio-dad, I would knock on the door and say Hi Dad!

I can not imagine what it would be like to have a huge secret entrusted to you.  Mom wanted to ensure that all her children were treated the same.  (They were) Didn’t want anyone to get hurt or feel like less of a family member.  She worked so hard to ensure that each family member would get the same amount spent on them at Christmas.  How about the rest of the family?  How do you not tell stories about the first five years of someone’s life?  Thirty years later when your asked about something, how do you not tell?  How do you carry this secret?  Mom and Dad, now gone for over a decade, it’s time to tell him.

The email comes, you may have a sister!

That changed my life forever.

To Be Continued . . . . . . .

Kevin’s Story, Part 14, The Bio-Dad

So now I have what I call a bio-dad.  And so starts a most fantastic journey into my past - - - -.  Are you wondering about your birth certificate yet?

I did have a name, many don’t have that much.  I tried 411, Google, and could not come up with a viable bio-dad.  There are some great resources.  Cindi’s list is a great starting point for records of any kind.  www.cindislist.com.

One huge challenge for ancestry researchers is too much information.  The bio-dad’s last name is as popular in England as Smith is in America.  When Google returns 1,790,000 possible hits you know you are in trouble.  This is when I started to study how Google works.  It is amazing how you can add a + or a - or even “ ” to get something completely different.  I recently bought a book about using Google as a research tool written by Lisa Loiuse Cooke called The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox.  If that book was available two years ago I could have saved thousands of hours.  You don’t have to be a Genealogist to learn a lot from this book.  For more information about the book look at her blog http://genealogygemspodcast.blogspot.com .

I remember a cousin asked if I wanted all the information? (Refer to part 9)  What does that mean?  Yes, why?  Well, do we want to have everything like past marriages, step brother and sisters?  Of course!  How about un-advertised past families?  We want to get history as correct as we can.  Even if it isn’t the most popular, we should err on the side of correct.  Even your past?  MINE? Of course, as correct as possible.  Pause for a couple months.

To Be Continued . . . . . . .

Kevin’s Story, Part 13, Three Sides To Every Story PG-13 Version

Family histories are shaped by those telling the stories.  Do you know what happened in the past?  Who really slept with who?  Why is my hair a different color than my parents?  Why do I have a huge nose and my brothers and sisters do not?  Did the mail man have a big nose?  Did the milk man have red hair?  Very interesting.

What is on your birth certificate?  I’m not talking about a record of live birth.  Those are generated by those telling the stories.  Is your birth certificate correct?  When asked who was the father, did Mom say Joe the Barber?  Was Joe the Barber really the father or was it Jimmy the ticket taker at the Century Theater?

When the story slipped out (at 45 years old) that I was adopted, I pulled out my wallet and read the names of my mother and father.  I wasn’t adopted.  After a little research a couple years ago I found out that when you are adopted they make a new birth certificate listing the adopting parents.  Oh!  So I write to the state of Maine and ask about my records.  I have to have a certified copy of my birth certificate.  (No the President doesn’t have one of those.)  I send away and get a certified copy that matches the one in my wallet. (Yes, it’s the same one) It just so happens that two years ago Maine allowed you to gain access to your real birth certificate.  I send a petition, with my certified copy to Maine.  That was a long wait.  The names do not match.

To Be Continued . . . . . . .

Sidebar; Just in case you were wondering what I thought about the truth being withheld, I will tell you.  Any young lad can become a bio-dad, it takes a real man to become a father.  It takes a dedicated family man to adopt a child and treat them as he does his own.  I was blessed to have one of each.  Blessed?  You’ll just have to keep reading to find out how.

Kevin’s Story, Part 12, Force It

So, , , , I decide to force the family history.  I spent two days, first with Yahoo, then Google, then in frustration I  tried ASK.com.  I typed in “who was my Mom’s Grandmother?”  I got something about grandparents day.  Forcing the family history was not working.  Obsessions do not follow logic.  Nor was I able to be logical.  So I wrote a letter.  After another month, I got the contact information and away we go.  I got names for all great grandparents!  This can sometimes be the bridge you need.  With those names I added an additional two generations and 94 cousins to the list.  That was two years ago.  In the last two years we have added almost two thousand more family members.  There are another 25 little green leaves yet to investigate.

Adding names to the family tree doesn’t add a lot of family history.  But, if you have the names, then you get the dates, then comes the Google.  I have only started to research our family history.  Most of the stories have been lost in time.  If the stories were not written down or passed down, you can’t get them back.

Families did not move often.  There could have been major moves to find work or harvest crops but many families stayed in the area for long periods.  If you get stuck, try looking at records for the next town over.  Maybe the next county over.  I was looking for the Grant family in a small county in Maine.  By accident I found a record for another Grant in Maine from a different county.  Come to find out they lived about three miles apart across a river.

To be continued . . . .

July 4th from Footnote.com, a great resource

The United States lost two founding fathers and former presidents on July 4, 1826. Thomas Jefferson, age 83, died at his Monticello home. John Adams, age 90, died a few hours later in Quincy, Massachusetts. His last words were reportedly, “Thomas Jefferson survives,” as he had not yet heard of Jefferson’s death.

In this age of instant access, it’s hard to fathom how slowly word traveled before the telegraph, telephone, and internet. It wasn’t until over a month later, on August 14, 1826, that the news was picked up by The Times in London. The paper published extracts from newspapers which arrived in Liverpool via the ship Canada. One account, reprinted in The Times, tells of “regrets that cannot but mingle with our joy in such a singular dispensation of Providence, as the departure of Jefferson and Adams on the same day, and that day the first jubilee of our independence.”

The Times also ran a piece commemorating Adams and Jefferson the following day from a New York paper dated July 13, 1826.

As noted in the published account above, not only was the coincidence of two of our most important founding fathers dying on the same day remarkable, but the date was also the 50th anniversary of our nation’s most patriotic occasion, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Explore Related Items on Footnote

• American Milestone Documents
• Continental Congress - Papers
• Explore more about Adams and Jefferson

Kevin's Story, Part 11, Graduation

Not mine, not a family history graduate, my son graduated from high school this week.  Time keeps ticking along.  It seems like yesterday that he was graduating from Kindergarten.  Amazing how his sister ten years older than he would be teaching the little ones in the same room that he attended only twelve years ago.  Things have changed.  Maggie stepped into the building as a five year old and stepped out of the same building twelve years later as a high school graduate in 1948, Kevin started Kindergarten in Maine, finished Kindergarten in Wilmington California on the other side of the Country.  First grade was in Connecticut, second grade Vallejo, California. Twelve years twelve schools?  Not that bad, maybe nine schools.  It wasn’t easy keeping our children in the same schools for twelve years.

Why couldn’t they teach me how to remember family history in school.  I learned algebra, and trig.  Why not teach the importance of family history.  In the seventh grade (Junior High School when I attended, where did the term middle school come from?  I digress) In the seventh grade they should have a class, Family History 101, that teaches you how to interview your grandparents.  In the eight grade, Family History 201, how to interview your parents.  If only I would have asked a few questions.

My first gift to you, if I can figure out how to attach it, “In The Life Of”.  Get out the video camera and have your kids ask grandma and grandpa a few questions.  https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B6827uafnKGDZWEyZGZmNjMtMTAyMC00OTAwLWE5YzgtMjI5YmNhZmI5MGIy&hl=en_US&authkey=CNCkn_EO

Photo’s, The Dummies Guide, Part 1

What better way to save your family history than to include photo's of your ancestors on that family tree.  If you have a just a few photo’s now, you will probably have a lot of photo’s later.  Find a way to organize your work now.  It will save you from duplicating and wasting your time.

What do you want to do with your photo’s?  Are you going to store them, share them with family members, post them on the Internet for all to see?  Maybe you want to create a memorial slide show for a family member that is no longer with us.  How about your grandma’s 85 birthday party?

Is the quality of your photo good enough?  If you are going to share them on the Internet then maybe they are fine.  What size should the picture be?  Many questions.  Some basic answers will follow.  Most important, I am not a photographer.  If you want the best then consult a pro.  I will try to bring you up to speed to help you with your genealogy work.  Anything past that you should do some additional study.

I love to work on photo’s and use a few programs to help me.  If that’s not your interest, I suggest you get help from someone that loves to.  I suggest you talk to Lisa at http://www.retrophotorestoration.com/.  Take a look at her website and see what is possible.  Lisa is passionate about working with her photo’s and will take the same care with yours.  If you think it is impossible, contact Lisa.
                                                                                                                                          
Most importantly.  Backup your work.  Have a backup plan and stick to it.  If you are going to digitize your pictures, make sure a copy of the work is protected and stored at a different place than the original.

To Be Continued . . . .

Kevins Story, Part 9

Well there’s two sides to every family (not always) and, you guessed it,  I have no information about the other side.  I can remember Uncles and Aunts names.  I remember my Grandfathers name that died before I was born.  I can remember grandma Clem.  The most fantastic lady you could imagine with blue hair.  Her favorite time of day was 6:00 pm when my Dad would come home from work.  They would take turns mentioning it.  Usually within 15 minutes my Dad was pouring a 7 and 7.  For Dad that meant 3 parts Fleischmanns to one part 7up.  For grandma Clem that meant 1 part Fleischmanns to 3 parts 7up.  There was always a bottle of 7up in the fridge.  I made a huge mistake of drinking what was left of the 7up one time.  We not going there with this story.

My Mom’s (Maggie) side of the family was so far away.  Today, you can text your friend that moved away to Japan 6 years ago and he gets the message and responds in under a minute.  In 1960 it was just a little bit different.  I’m sure as the family member was boarding the plane the last words said was I’ll write.  That meant a Christmas card in December with two or three lines scratched real fast because you had 20 more cards to get in tomorrow’s mail.  You would think that anyone that could type as fast as lightning would get more letters out.  Not the case, just too much of life to tend to.  I am sure anyone on the receiving side of one of Maggie’s letters was praying that it was typed.  You could spend all day trying to read her writing.  It is different now, every time I pick up a scrap of paper that has her handwriting on it, I get all choked up.  The smallest things get ya’.  The point?  I don’t have a phone number, haven’t seen anyone in 20 years.  I remember one of the cousins was working on a family tree.  I even got offered a copy of the work.  Why didn’t I pursue that?

How do you spell obsession?  I couldn’t sleep!

Continued . . . .

Kevin's Story, Part 8, read slowly

I guess the family history stopped in Texas some place.  What had happened to that file cabinet?  The answer that my niece needed was in the file cabinet.  If I could just take a look.  I remember they had a son.  I remember his name because it was the same as my Uncle the war hero,  (If you are following along, you will hear a lot about the war hero) I called 411 no help.  I remember only one thing.  He worked for Texas Instruments (TI).  411, I let there fingers do the walkin’ and there fingers found 24 phone numbers, “#@!?”.  This is going to be much harder than I thought.  I get the main number and call ‘em up.  Me; “I would like to talk to my cousin.”,  TI; “We have no one here by that name.”, me; “#@!?”, TI; “He may have transferred to the new division when the company split about 10 years ago.”   So I call up the split off company.  Why not, can’t hurt.  Me; “I would like to talk to my cousin”, TIsplit; “We have no one here by that name”, “we used to have a guy with that last name but that wasn’t his first name.”, me; “may I talk with him please?”  “He hasn’t worked her in years.  “#@!?”  411, not in that town, but we have one in another town.

Ring, ring, ring, “hello”, “are you my cousin?”  He actually was my cousin.  What’s the chance of that?  And he has all his Mom and Dad’s computer records.  I receive them by way of FedEx the next afternoon.  WoW!  Fifteen years labor, thousands of hours, vacation trips, thousands of dollars spent, and in my hand.  What a gift!  There labor of love and devotion, and I will try to honor them by keeping it going.  Any reference to Auntie M has nothing to do with a movie about Oz, but only to give credit where credit is due.

The next 24 hours I spend reading over everything.  So much stuff, now I have to get this organized.  That day Family Tree Maker arrives in the mail.  I load up the program and start to work.  I don’t think I left the chair for days.  With the program comes a trial offer for ancestry.com.  I upload my family tree.  Then something starts happening.  The little green leaf pops up, then another, then hundreds.

To be continued . . .

Kevin's Story, Part 7

The ancestry question is looming.  I now have a list with 22 names on it.  I remember my Aunt Marion and Uncle Henry were really into genealogy research.  They only visited a couple times as I was growing up.  When they did my Uncle Henry would get up early Sunday morning and say “you ready to go”  Off to church we would go.  Only a few times in my life had I seen a man have such a love of the Lord.  Not the going to church ‘cause he has to kinda guy, the kind that is just so positive about the Lords love for us.  He had a profound effect on the rest of my life.  (A different story)  Anyway Uncle Henry would take me to breakfast after church.

Twenty five years go by and I travel to Texas to work at Bell Helicopter.  My Aunt and Uncle do not live far away so I decide to look them up.  I visit with them for four hours and ten minutes, four hours of which they show me the family tree they have been working on.  They are so excited because they just found a long lost family member.  They take me into the hobby room, which has every horizontal surface lined with family tree pages.  A file cabinet full of paper, and stories of trips they have taken to find stuff.  They devoted years to the project, It’s all coming back to me.

Fifteen years go by and I’m thinking, I’ll just give them a call.  Not in the book.  411 no help.  I have no idea how to contact anyone on that side of the family.

To be continued . . .

Kevins Story, Part 6

We made it to California in a week not a day.  Family history?  Hold your britches.  (That’s what they used to tell me.  Not sure why.  I assumed it meant wait a minute.)  What did I know about the family?  I am trying to remember stories.  My parents have been gone for 10 years, and I can’t remember yesterday.

Okay I remember my Dad grew up on a farm in Iowa.  I think the name was something simple, Jones or Brown.  He was farmed out a lot of his childhood because his parents split up when he was about five.  My Mom would tell me that when he was growing up he worked hard even at his young age.  A typical Christmas morning for my Dad was up at the crack of dawn (that’s how they talked then), get the chores done, and get back to the house to celebrate Christmas.  My Dad would have to go upstairs until the family finished with there Christmas celebration, and then he would get to come down and have Christmas dinner with them.

My Mom’s story is way better.  Remember she was born on Christmas day.  Christmas was a huge celebration for her growing up.  Even though she lost her Mom when she was seven, Christmas was always great.  Think of it this way.  The whole family gets together to go to midnight mass.  As they come out of the church, happy birthday Maggie.  (They didn’t call her Maggie, but I didn’t want you to get lost.)  How many kids get a happy birthday one hour into it?  Not only that but, every one comes over on your birthday.  And everybody brings something.  A cherry pie for your birthday.  A ham, mashed potatoes, a huge feast for your birthday.  No one gets treatment like this on there birthday.

Oh yeah, that ancestry question.  Got sidetracked, I have to start with my Aunt and Uncle.  If you look up Genealogist in the dictionary you will most likely find there picture.

To be continued . . .

Kevins Story, Part 5

I am the oldest of five children.  One brother is no longer with us.  My brother called and asked if I could help his daughter with a family history project that she was working on for school.  “Sure” So he asks the question and I have a blank stare.  You would think the oldest would know something.  Who gave you that idea?
“I’ll get back to you!”  Not the answer my niece was looking for.  Where do I start.  I remember on my mother side there were three brothers, a sister, my grand fathers name, and his second wife.  On my fathers side, there was a brother that died fighting so we could be free, and a sister.  I remember his mother, her husband, and my grand father.  Where do I start.  I really have no information but there are people on both sides of my family that have been doing research into family history.  How do I get in touch with them?

In 1959 we migrated west.  I remember a 1959 Ford station wagon.  You could fold down all the seats in the back and that left just enough room for your legs to hang down, and your face to be level and right between mom and dad in the front seat.  Bangor Maine to Wilmington California, I’m thinking we should be there by dinner.  Super highway’s, not yet.  Fancy hotels, dreamer.  Air conditioned car, what is that?  Views straight over the cliff on the right side of the car?  “Fathaaa, you are to close!!”  Two lane roads over the summit.  That’s one lane that way and one lane your way.  Four year olds don’t remember how hot it is thankfully.  My mother never forgot.

To be continued . . .

Funeral Records, What A Find

Do you have holes in your family tree?  As you fill in the family tree, you may get lucky and find more family history hidden in the funeral record.  There is a good deal of information on cemetery headstones.  I found the headstone of my great grandfather.  (I didn't really find it, my cousin found it and posted it on our family web site)  If you get a picture of the headstone, you are in luck.  Most of us walk away thankful for what we have.  However, dig a little deeper, while you are there, and look at the possibilities.  I find my great great grand fathers name and my great great grandmothers maiden name.  This is huge information.  My great grandfather was from Ireland.  This opened up a new avenue of research.  Cause of death Apoplexy.  This is not much help.  In early 1900 apoplexy had a lot of meanings.  I you lost consciousness and then died suddenly they called it apoplexy.  It could have been a heart attack,  ruptured cerebral aneurysms, an aortic aneurysm may have been the case with this one.  Many in my family suffer from aortic aneurysms.  Some funeral records that I have found even tell you how long the person was sick.  The occupation is even interesting.  My grand father was a stonecutter.  John E Farrell was his father in law.  He may have worked with him at some point, maybe even learned the trade from him.  The family story is becoming more clear with every bit of information that we find.  This one document filled a lot of holes.  

Kevins Story, Part 4

Family history is made daily.  Take a look at your family tree, look back just one or two generations.  Three generations back they lived on farms and grew there own food.  There world may have been confined to two or three square miles.

The first television was introduced at the 1939 world’s fair.  RCA was petitioning the Government to allocate room for 13 channels to transmit television pictures into the home.  That was kind of silly because who could afford $500.00 for one of those picture boxes.  By the 1950's RCA had what they wanted, except channel one was taken back for local government broadcasts.  What’s this got to do with Maggie, you ask.

After graduation in 1950 what work was available?  You could go to college, if your family had a lot of money, you could be a waitress, maybe a librarian.  A woman’s role was to get married and raise a family.  They would look forward to Friday night and spend most of the week getting ready for the dance.  Sitting around the radio turned into sitting around the TV every night.  Baseball games never looked so good.  That opened a whole new industry repairing the picture boxes.  Maggie got a job keeping books for a small television and radio repair shop.  The commute was excellent, the TV shop was located directly below her apartment.  Maggie did not own a car.  Not much need, she didn’t know how to drive.  Winterport came by it’s name for good reason.

To be continued . . .

Kevin’s Hurdles “A Better Story” Part 2

I’m driving, I’m am so happy that I may have found him.  I pull into the parking lot.  Walk to the office.  “Oh, we are so glad you came to visit.  I have been out to the site personally and I think you were correct.  I can’ wait for you to see what we have found”

This is a huge place.  This amazing lady puts me into one of those electric carts and off we go.  As we drive up to the area where my brother is laid to rest, it is beautiful.  There is a huge old oak tree.  And below the gigantic oak is a thousand very small grave markers.  As I start walking, I notice each soul was only with us for a very short time.  Some for a week, but most only for a day.  As I got closer it was clear to see which site belonged to my little brother.  The little guy I never met, never got to torment,   These amazing people had spent the morning working around my brothers plot.  It was manicured to perfection.  It was clear that all the trimming had been done by hand.  To honor a little one that had passed over fifty years ago in such a loving and tender way is beyond the words I can write.

A lost brother is found.  History has been restored.  Yes these memories are painful to remember in our lifetime, but we need to save them, we need to honor them.  Matson Matthew would have turned 50 this past March.  He missed an awesome life.  So we take the time to ensure that those that follow us will know of the little boy with red hair, that made it only three days, was not forgotten.

I can highly recommend All Souls Cemetery and Mausoleum in Long Beach California.  I can’t thank them enough.