Family reunions offer the perfect opportunity
to research our root
Family Searcher
By Nina Brawn
Warm weather has finally arrived in Maine, and it’s a great time to take advantage of person-to-person genealogy. Compile lists of questions, check your maps, and make those personal contacts. For the lucky ones, it is family reunion season, a chance to see relatives you rarely see or might not otherwise meet.
It has been my experience that impending family reunions make people consider their family history, which sparks memories, so it may be the best time to ask questions. If you have time before the reunion and really want detailed answers, you might consider sending your questions out ahead of time.
At my husband Fred’s last reunion, I sent out requests ahead of time for old photos and documents. I brought my scanner to the reunion and spent most of my time scanning photos. I am still not that comfortable making conversation, so it was a great way to get conversations going, learn some history, and allow Fred “alone time” with his family. You may be able to find an in-law in your family willing to do the same thing for you at your reunion.
Warmer weather often makes people more receptive to visitors with questions, and may be the only time of year that older relatives feel comfortable traveling about to help you find those old family homesteads. (Quick before the mosquitoes come out!) Something about sunshine and warm breezes just seems to make people more willing to open their homes. So if you have had a cool reception in the past, your relative has had time to think about your questions, and may have an answer for you. Some people need to take time to see that you weren’t asking about Uncle Ralph to try to get a share of his fortune, or expose the family secret.
So don’t be discouraged if you get rebuffed, at least you have opened the door, and each contact gets you closer to answers, and at the very least, gives you a chance to better know that relative and their own story.
Fred’s family has been in central Maine for many generations, so as the warmer weather has started the sports season, we have done more traveling through his family’s “home territory,” I have taken advantage of our traveling to grandkids’ sporting events to share discoveries and pique his interest.
We recently solved “the mystery of Uncle George” who turned out to be Fred’s great uncle – George Gray. We discovered that he lived in that abandoned house we always admired in Glenburn, and now I have an excuse to photograph it, which Fred did for me the last time we passed it. He also stopped to take a few snapshots of Uncle Bert’s headstone, and now we need to discover why it had anchors on it. And tonight, while I am teaching a class, he is walking down Gray Valley Road to see if anything remains of the Brawn Homestead foundation.
You never know when something will click with someone, so keep making those personal connections between your family’s past and the family present.
Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft is a longtime genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader e-mails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com. Her semimonthly column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society which meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center at 6:30 p.m. Guests are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501.
