Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Not Just Anyone's Road To Travel

Many people have little interest in their past or those relatives that have gone before them. They believe in simply living in the here and now with a few goals for their future. What they do not understand is that who we are today is a result of those who came before us and I do not mean just in the gene pool neither.

I am talking about their character. How they conducted their everyday life. Why they made the choices that they made. Genealogy is a puzzle consisted of many pieces of a person's life and as I gather more information about that person and fill in those blank spaces I can create that person's character and get a very clear understanding of who that person was, where they lived, the choices they made.

John Gotlieb Keller was my great great grandfather who came over to this country in the early part of 1850. He left a country destroyed by constant Civil War only to encounter the same here when the South succeeded from the Union thus created its own Civil War. But think about it. John did not run and hide but took up arms to fight for what he believed in, to show his loyalty and patriotism for his new homeland. This military trend would be seen again and again throughout the generations that followed up to and included the Iraq War.

John worked hard and provided his family with a decent existence. He was active and well respected in the German Community and was a neighborhood leader. When he died suddenly in 1890, he was remembered and his legacy has been passed down through the generations. His daughter Mary would inherited his strength in character, hard work and patriotism and she would be remembered for her active work in the church. I saw the same things in my grandfather, her son and then again in my mother.

The Bolands came over to this country two at a time then working and sending over for the others so that they could all have a better chance in life. They are a lesson in family dynamics.

And now as I piece together the paternal side of my family, I begin to realize that my great grandmother Eva Wisloski was also of strong character and great will. As each of her children married and started their families they lived under Eva's roof until they could afford to live out on their own. I also believe she was her husband's second wife and that he may have had two or three children of his own in which Eva continued to raise after his death. This woman raised seven children on her own in a small house on Roxborough Avenue and never spoke a word of English.

Genealogy is not for everyone. The work is long and tedious and every time you move one step forward in your research, you end up moving two steps backward in the process. It takes years and years of research to create that puzzle called a person's life. There is no instant gratification but the rewards are great when you stumbled across that valuable piece of family history.

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