Chasing the Ghosts in My Family Tree
Detective, seeker, mystic: joyous roles of the aged researcher
I always knew my grandmother Kitty was a Bell Telephone operator, but it wasn’t until I saw her name Catherine Flanagan on a 1910 census enumeration form that I was swept away by the reality of her existence as a 20-year-old making her way in the world. Collecting family history had been my parents’ hobby: my mother, an early adopter of Family Tree Maker; my dad, every librarian’s good buddy, always ready for a field trip; both of them, close listeners of family stories.
It was 2004. I was 56 years old and newly retired. My turn to be enchanted by the chase.
In the years that I’ve spent exploring family history, I’ve discovered three modes of inquiry:
- Detective. Investigations satisfy my brain.
- Seeker. Learning how I belong opens my heart.
- Mystic. Sudden, shimmering revelations awaken my soul.
As the data, stories, and experiences accumulate, I have to consider ways of preserving and sharing. Since I have no children, there are no logical heirs to take over files and carry on my work. This becomes another search: who cares?
Detective: need to solve the puzzle
The detective is a puzzle-solver, driven by curiosity to fill in as many branches of the family tree as possible. For me, getting all the names down on paper became a game. I’d bring my tree to family picnics and to reunions with family in Ireland. What pleasure there is in lining up all grandpa’s siblings, finding the streets they lived on, and learning what they did for a living. Rounding up birth, marriage, and death records expands the puzzle.
Not finding desired records created new challenges. Good for my brain! I became dogged as a crime scene investigator, stalking the answers from new angles, forcing my mind out of its old assumptions.
Sharing. During the years when my mother was still a good source of details and clarifications, I posted all my findings on frequently revised personal web pages at Mad in Pursuit, along with downloadable .pdfs of trees and charts. I’ve been amazed at how many distant cousins have found these pages and sent me more information, sometimes even photographs.
Seeker: need to belong to a tribe
As a seeker, the family historian is driven by longing. As names and relationships emerge, the who are you question becomes who am I?
Eagerly, I moved beyond the branching tree to the bigger picture — the landscape. I sensed the continuity between my ancestors and me. Ethnic traditions, the old neighborhoods, personalities, and life decisions all began to add up. I found clusters: athletes, entrepreneurs, craftsmen, and strong women. Some ancestors planted their roots deep in a place. Others were restless, always looking for a new frontier.
The more I learned, the better my imagination could take over, visualizing my ancestors during their important life events. By walking in their shoes, seeing through their eyes, I recognized myself. These are my people. They paved the way for my existence. I belong to this tribe.
This is not tribalism, which traps people behind the locked gates of ethnic superiority. This is understanding, which has opened my heart and allowed me to build on my people’s virtues and to forgive them their flaws. Being comfortable with my own identity makes me a better citizen of the world.
As much as DNA analysis dominates the genealogy news these days, biology is not the only factor in belonging. To fully understand my mother, I needed to explore her step-father’s large family. To fully appreciate my father’s tribe, I had to become a student of all the interconnected families in a couple of small townlands in eastern Galway.
Sharing. My father was first to put in writing the history of the Price family in St. Louis. My mother designed a booklet around his words and they handed it out at a family picnic. As I filled out his stories, I built on his words and produced a 19-page, photocopied booklet “Of Brilliance and Belonging,” illustrated with a few precious photos and maps. In 2009, it was another fun handout for a family gathering. The .pdf was posted on Mad in Pursuit for far-flung family.
As I got to know my grandmother Bridget’s vast Irish family on Facebook, I formed a Facebook Group for descendants of my great-grandparents and their siblings, now a good place for posting vintage family photos and sharing memories. In 2018, this social media page and my Mad in Pursuit archives were supplemented with the Old Green River blog, for new information and insights as they emerge.
In 2020, as Covid-19 raged, I went deeper and drafted a novelized version of my grandmother Kitty’s family history. Publication date TBD.
Mystic: need to experience the revelation
There comes a day when a breakthrough chunk of information provides more than the “w00t” of finding a needed puzzle piece. A rush of understanding sweeps through my whole body and — there! There for a moment I feel the tingle of love, the warmth of proximity. My ancestor — my dad, my grandmother, a great uncle — is just behind me, sharing my discovery. The room shimmers and sparkles.
In general, the mystic is driven by the need for an all-encompassing experience, beyond logic, beyond intellect. The mystic uses her rituals and practices to liberate her spirit, to become one with the divine or (depending on your philosophy) the collective unconscious.
Over the years, I have found that I get to a place where I can’t do family history casually anymore. I have to quiet my mind and go deep. I need to open up and listen. Here is where I have found myself as an accidental mystic, achieving a rare, sudden communion, not with a deity but with a family member.
In piecing together my grandmother Kitty’s timeline, I remembered her saying that her early years in Edwardsville, Illinois, were the happiest of her childhood. One quiet evening, something prodded me to ask: was there something special about Edwardsville itself? Half asleep, I looked up Edwardsville. In the Wikipedia article, I spotted the historical district of Leclaire. Wait. That’s where they lived! But how did I know this?
I sat in my easy chair to learn about Leclaire. It was an intentional community founded by the idealist-industrialist N.O. Nelson as a model company town, a workingman’s utopia. I explored deeper, into 19th-century news articles and other online documents. Suddenly, there he was — my great-grandfather Moses M. Flanagan — superintendent of Nelson’s cabinetry factory in Leclaire.
Oh, the glow I felt! The rush of understanding! I felt such deep connection with my grandmother’s childhood — the prosperity, the gardens, the music lessons, the lovely little houses on treelined streets, and the pride in her accomplished papa.
Of course, this bliss experience passes and the next morning I am back in detective mode, now with a set of new puzzle pieces to wrangle into place.
Sharing. Few things are more boring than someone cornering you at a party to give you every little detail of their exciting (to them) ancestor hunt. And yet, few things are more important than the epiphanies, those breakthrough moments of deep insight and revelation.
In 2011, I published Tribe of the Breakaway Beads, a “novella” that blended my own memoirs with stories about my “foremothers.” In essence, it describes the process I went through, how the family misfit discovered the sparkle of belonging to a very special tribe of strong women and the men who loved them. The book was my way of talking about the experience of the search. I gave away copies to my dozens of women cousins. [Amazon link]
The gift
I love all the facets of family history research: the diligent detective work, the open-hearted seeking of my people, and the occasional mystical breakthrough. I’ve accumulated a mountain of information (in trees and timelines, in databases and file folders), a treasure trove of family stories (about immigration, about horrible deaths, about drunkards and gangsters, about generosity and abandonment), and a collection of stories about my own experiences of discovery.
Like everyone who starts assembling the family story, I have worried about my work being lost or tossed away. But I learned that sharing as I go, in small chunks, in a variety of formats, expands the interest pool. It increases the likelihood that a niece or cousin will preserve the information and repeat the stories. Chasing family ghosts has evolved from a pleasant personal pastime to an important intergenerational gift.
You, precious one, are worth all this work. You, precious one, belong to my tribe.
