Crazy Thing I Did to Get Genealogical Information

(For those of you, who are not familiar with Genea-Musings by Randy Seaver, he writes an excellent daily genealogy blog . Every Saturday, he posts an interesting genealogical question, requesting readers answer in their own blog. I suggested the question he used this week, What was the craziest thing you did to get some genealogical information? and here is my answer.)

The craziest thing I did for genealogy happened at our wedding reception. Fred and I married in our mid-20’s, well before I even knew what genealogy was. I was from Chicago and Fred grew up outside of Buffalo, New York, where his parents lived on a small farm, complete with barn.

Because of the distance, Fred’s parents, Fred (Sr.) and Ruth Schattner, (bless their hearts) hosted a second reception for local family members a few weeks after our wedding near Chicago. It was outdoors, bring a dish-to-pass, family reunion picnic on a thankfully beautiful, sunny day. It’s a large family, so there may have been close to 100 people there, most I met for the first time.

So here is the crazy thing I did. Before the party, in the barn, I cut and hung about a dozen long lengths from rolled paper – the kind you might use to line drawers and put out plenty of pens. Then I told everyone that we were having a contest and they should try to draw as detailed of a family chart as they could make and sign their chart. And SURPRISE! They did! Aunts and uncles from both sides of the family, with help from others, drew detailed (pedigree) charts.

I learned not only names and relations, but who in the family had a good memory about family. I rolled up the six best and took them home. I wrote letters to the best chart writers, and they provided even more details. This was in 1979. All this information sat in a bedroom closet for many years.

In 1996, when I got my first computer, I still had those charts and letters. Many of the people were no longer with us, or memories had faded. But I pulled out those rolls of paper, and that’s how I started in my genealogy research.