Tag: ancestry

Wayback Wednesday: Elise, Nancy, and Sarah

Elise, Nancy, and Sarah. 1946

On Wednesdays we go way back. This week’s photo is my mom Nancy (the baby), between her mother Elise (left) and her grandmother Sarah (right).

I love unposed moments like this, when people were just being themselves. But I also can’t see it without some poignancy.

I know what they can’t: That Nancy would adore her grandmother, but struggle with her own mother, all their lives. She was caught between them here, and would be often as she grew up.

Sarah and Elise were actually stepmother/stepdaughter, and their own relationship was frosty.

There’s a lot of frustration in this photo. There’s a lot about love, mothering, disappointment, failure, and the ways we keep trying.

Minnie’s Lament

A most unimaginable loss.

Earlier this week my Twitter feed blew up. Reclaim the Records, a nonprofit advocacy group, announced that they had received access to the scanned birth, death, and marriage records held by New York City’s Department of Records and Information Services. A beta website would be immediately forthcoming. 

Genealogists’ work is often done by inches, record by record, because municipal governments like to hold on to their documents very tightly. You pay a fee, and then wait 6 weeks, or maybe 6 months to get one piece of paper. If they can find it at all. 

Watching a bunch of history geeks get unfettered access to thousands of scanned records, for free, RIGHT NOW, was like watching a pinata burst open. It’s just that the pinata was full of old, handwritten papers, and the kids were actually adults. For genealogists, this is the best kind of party.

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Ex Libris

Genealogy sometimes feels like quicksand.

Instead of writing a blog post this weekend, I spent far too much time listening to Adele and creating a photo album for a past vacation. I knew perfectly well that I was stalling. I was operating in the nostalgia I could handle, rather than the uncomfortable one that actually needed my attention.

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Hello My Name Is

I had happily imagined a pile of family photos. I didn’t bother thinking about what might be on the back of them.

This woman’s face drifted up to me this week. She came out of a pile of photos, a randomly selected card in a shuffled deck of memories. It has been some days, but I keep going back to her although — and maybe because — I have no idea who she is.

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