This is Rosannah Sheldon Palmer with her sisters, Meridia, Helen, and Freida. Rosannah was my great grandmother. I didn't really know her. She passed away when I was just a year old, but I always heard stories of "Nanny" and I wanted to know more.
When I was 8, I decided I wanted to be an archaeologist. Ok, let's be honest. I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I imagined adventure...excitement...exotic places... Yes, I grew up and realized it wasn't the most realistic career choice, but something from those aspirations did stick with me. I'm a researcher at heart. I love digging into the past, whether that be searching through mounds of pictures at home or documents on ancestry.com.
There's something satisfying about piecing together a family history. Who were these people? Where did they live? What was it like? Why did they... you fill in the blank. I have to do a lot of supposing. Sometimes that includes checking out the history of an area or just looking deeper into what life was like in a certain decade or century. Sometimes I find a picture and I have no idea who or how old anyone is.
And then sometimes I get something like this...
This was written on the back of the picture of those four adorable girls. Dec. 1, 1913. Clara Palmer (nee Nebel), my great-great grandmother was sending a picture to her mother (my great-great-great grandmother) Anna Louisa Nebel. Everyone called her Lucy. This one little scrap of paper tells me so many things. I know the ages of the girls. Where they lived and where their grandmother lived. I know that Meridia was usually called Mina and even where her sister Helen got her middle name, Lucy. Suddenly my world has expanded and I need to find out more.
Thanks to sites like ancestry.com, so many people can connect their trees, pictures, and even stories of family. With summer break in full swing, this is where I've been ending up after a day of working on stuff for next school year. I share a subscription with my mom and she's been great about letting me go off connecting the people she does know of with the millions of sources out there. It isn't always easy. Sometimes the ancestors aren't so awesome. Sometimes I have a headache from trying every possible spelling I can think of for first and last names, especially when it comes to the census records.
And then there are the moments I get lucky and I find a record that gives me multiple generations worth of names and dates, like last night's foray into the Miller family line. (Oh man! That is one crazy story I will be telling later.) It's like hitting the lottery. Ok, maybe not that awesome, but pretty close.
So...here's my journey. Seeking the dead.
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