THE RELUCTANT RELATIVE - FOSTERING and ADOPTING - WHO CARES WHO THE ANCESTORS ARE?

I am deeply impressed to learn that one of my relations became the single mom of six children as she adopted five of the many foster children she was presented.  She lives in a state where adoption is inexpensive and where there is financial help for those who cannot afford to do so otherwise.  This too impresses me. 


Now a retired senior citizen, she recently told me that she's not much into genealogy.  I'd hoped that she could share memories with me that she had, because I was way too young or not even born yet when she had them.  What did she remember about certain relations who are a mystery to me?  After some sharing, she told me that her genetic daughter is not interested and the other children who she adopted don't care about their birth families or the heritage of their adopted mother.  Nobody is interested in searches or charts.  The chances are good that searches - such as adoption registries - would bring up parents who were fairly local at the time, and might still be.  She assures me that none of her children want the mess.

I thought it was brave of her to say all this in a matter of fact way, as she referred me to another family member who is "into" the family history and genealogy.  I contacted that person more than once, but have not heard back.  Meanwhile, I gave the oral history, all that I'd heard or knew, and what was on documents, to the reluctant relation.

I am not going to push.
No I'm not.
I've run into the brick wall that is another person many times.

As much as possible, I will respect her wishes.
I will never put anything on the Internet or in a database about her family.

Will one or all the children eventually change their minds?
I think it is possible, after she has passed on especially, as this is the one and only parent all of them have ever gotten to know.

Another issue with this person, if issue is the right word, is that she doesn't understand what little stories about a person's behavior or attitudes mean to me or people like me.  Certainly one incident doesn't necessarily typify their entire life, but she found that one woman burned garlic to rid the house of evil spirits stupid, while to me it verified the woman's peasant beliefs, folk beliefs that mixed with her Catholicism.  Ethnographic details can be extremely helpful also if you're trying to figure out someone's allegiance to their ethnicity.  In some parts of the world where there were many tribes or ethnicities living near each other, at the time they certainly knew the beliefs, as well as clothing, food, language, and other differences people had.


C Ancestry Worship Genealogy  All Rights Reserved  2017

USING DAR LIBRARIES WHEN YOU'RE NOT IN DAR

Got to library.dar.org
Look up top for the GRC button and click on it
YOU WILL GET TO A SEARCH THROUGH GENEALOGY RECORDS THAT MEMBERS OF DAR TRANSCRIBED FROM BOOKS.  They scanned the books and indexed.
EXCERPT: The DAR Genealogical Research System (GRS) is a free resource provided by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution   (DAR) to aid general genealogical research and to assist with the DAR membership process. The GRS is a collection of databases that provide access to the many materials amassed by the DAR since its founding in 1890.


But nobody is saying you have to join DAR or that the information won't be valuable to you.


EXCERPT:

GRC

The DAR’s Genealogical Records Committee Reports began in 1913 and continue to arrive every year. The information in these 20,000 typescript volumes is predominately Bible record and cemetery record transcriptions along with many other types of transcribed or abstracted genealogical sources. The Genealogical Records Committee has sponsored a project since the late 1990s to index all names in every one of the GRC Reports in the DAR Library. The GRC tab provides a direct link to the “GRC National Index” and to the page explaining this project in more detail.
The GRC Reports themselves are digitized. Researchers may view the digital images at the DAR Library’s Seimes Technology Center. The images are not available at the present time online outside of DAR headquarters. The original typescript volumes have been retired and placed in off-site storage, so researchers must now use the digital images.

RADICAL VIEWPOINT ABOUT NAMING BABIES?

A new friend told me that he thinks that children who are named after someone exactly but with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. after the name are abused by the naming.  He feels that naming this way automatically puts too much expectation on the child, usually a boy, to follow in some ancestors footsteps.  He says it's usually rich and influential families who name their sons this way, leaving little room for fulfilling one's own interests and talents; if the ancestor was a tycoon so should the child.  He feels family pride is a detriment.


He was so sure of this opinion of his that I had to think about it.


I see what he means, I'm just not sure that he's right most of the time. That's because while naming this way is about class and culture - you could say tribal - I've found such children usually have nicknames that are rather cute and don't carry the burden of the descendant's name except on official forms in adulthood Some of their own friends don't even know that they are a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.  Also sometimes they choose to go through life with a second or third given name.


Then there's that there are families who are warm, loving, nurturing, and caring for their children and families who are not of all classes and cultures.


However, I did once know a man who was burdened by an authoritarian dad who was a star in the insurance business and disappointed in him because he got a Masters degree and became an English teacher!  Though making a comparatively paltry salary, all his friends growing up who "had" still accepted him because they all figured he didn't really have to work and lived off inheritance.


For the genealogist, while a father's son is a Jr.  And when the father dies, the son is no longer a Jr.  But if he has a son named after him that son is Jr.  A numbered name does not imply direct descent.  A nephew can easily become a second.  A grandchild a third.  Some of the families with this tendency seem to recycle given names!