I can’t believe it’s the final week of 2022’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, and I actually followed through with it! Because I learned about the challenge late, I started with Week 3, Favorite Picture, but since then I’ve done a post each week (one week I did two), totaling 51 posts -- over 100 written pages. The final topic this year is Looking Ahead. In 2023 I’d like to spend some time working on three specific genealogy areas: documenting stories from my living relatives and myself, writing about and further researching my husband’s family, and improving my research skills.
How often do we kick ourselves because we didn’t ask more questions when our grandparents or great-grandparents were alive? Either we believe we have more time, we don’t think of good questions to ask, or we feel awkward and uncomfortable asking personal questions about the past. My grandparents and father are no longer alive, but my mom, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even two granduncles are living. 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks has spurred me to reach out and ask my relatives questions, but usually it’s a result of the current week’s post. My mom and one of her cousins have been wonderful resources whenever I have questions about the LaViolet side of the family. Her cousin’s perspective has been especially valuable. She’s the daughter of my Grampy Phil’s sister, Diane, so many of the stories she shared were passed down from her mom, who was 10 years younger than my grandfather. The gist of the family stories is usually the same, but Aunt Diane’s memories often have a slightly different perspective or additional details. I’ve also developed a lovely little pen pal relationship with my 94-year-old granduncle in Montreal, Jean-Guy, who is always willing to answer my family history questions. Going forward, I plan to be more deliberate in what I ask family members. What do I want to know about their lives that hasn’t come up as a blog topic? How do my family members, like my mom and her siblings, remember events? Like my grandfather and Aunt Diane, I’m sure they all have slightly different takes. What questions am I not asking that I should be? As genealogists, we’re often so focused on our ancestors that we overlook our own experiences and history. What will my future grandchildren and great-grandchildren want to know about me and my husband? We lived through the Challenger explosion, 9/11, a pandemic, and watched the news in horror during the January 6th attack on the Capitol. We didn’t experience the American Revolution or the Civil War, but we’ve lived through historical events future generations will study. I wonder about my ancestors’ perspective on historical events. Will future generations wonder about ours? When we think about our immigrant ancestors, we regret that few wrote down their coming-to-America stories, yet my husband is an immigrant who came to America with his parents in the 1990s. When you have an accent, that “Where are you from?” question comes up frequently. I’ve heard his coming-to-America story hundreds of times, but I have yet to write it down and preserve it for future generations. That’s something I need to do.
Speaking of my husband, he has a rich and fascinating family history completely different from my own. He’s an Eastern European Jew who grew up in Russia, but his ancestors originally hailed from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. Growing up in the Soviet Union was difficult, and being a Jew made it more so. As he tells people, “I had to move to America to become a Russian.” Though he was born in Russia and a citizen of the country, he wasn’t considered Russian, but a Jew. It was his ethnicity, written in all of his legal documents. There were jobs and promotions his family couldn’t get, colleges they couldn’t attend, and they faced incredible amounts of prejudice despite being part of the well-educated “Intelligentsia” class. In addition, religion wasn’t recognized in the Soviet Union, as citizens were required to be loyal to the government instead of a God. Any religious identity, history, or traditions were lost over the span of a couple generations. Because of the extreme fear and paranoia caused by living in the Soviet Union, family stories were lost too. It was even potentially dangerous for some stories to be passed down, so they were swallowed, buried, forgotten. During the past two years, I’ve encouraged my father-in-law to scan and share all of his family pictures and documents with us, which in turn has generated some incredible family stories. There are of course some things we already knew, like his grandmother’s war history. She survived the 872-day Siege of Leningrad during WWII, which cost the lives of approximately 1,500,000 people. Being a survivor is a point of pride for her, as survivors are rightfully considered war heroes. However, we didn’t know until a recent conversation that she lost her only sister during the siege. We also didn’t know that before moving to Leningrad from Ukraine, she had a large, close, extended family, most of whom perished during the war either in battle or in concentration camps. We were surprised to learn that my father-in-law’s grandfather was a member of the military band in Poland, and the proudest moment of his life was playing in the band for Czar Nicholas II during the Romanov Tercentenary. That story certainly wouldn’t have been “safe” to share in a country that murdered its czar. Members of my husband’s family were thrown into the Gulag, victims of Stalin’s paranoia. Some didn’t survive the ordeal; others were changed forever. His grandfather was forced to hide in a neighbor’s pigpen with his siblings during the pogroms. Some of these stories are reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof, except they’re fact, not fiction. My husband has expressed a sense of loss and at times frustration that most of this family history wasn’t shared with him until recently, but I think it was the culture of secrecy and paranoia of living in the Soviet Union, and not an unwillingness to share on the part of his parents. In fact, when I ask questions, they’re open and eager to tell me about their family. Sometimes they honestly don’t think of volunteering information, and it takes the right question to unlock it, which is exactly how we learned the story of my husband’s great-grandfather who played for the Czar. In 2023 I want to write down and share some of his family history and continue researching his ancestry.
And that leads to my final genealogy goal for 2023: improving my research skills. For an amateur, I’m a decent researcher. I’ve uncovered a lot of information and broken down most of my brick walls. I’ve learned so much this year through watching videos, participating in groups, and reading blog posts, but I have more to learn. Digging into Eastern European Jewish genealogy is challenging compared to finding records in America or Canada. Genetic genealogy is another area in which I’m ignorant and would like to have a greater understanding. I’ve helped some family members and friends work on their family trees this year and found it just as interesting as doing my own, so I’m considering becoming a professional genealogist. As a first step towards exploring this avenue, I may take some online courses through Boston University next fall. I don’t always know what I don’t know. Taking courses will help me answer some of the questions I’m not aware I should be asking.
I’m looking forward to taking part in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge in 2023. Following along with the challenge wasn’t always easy. There were weeks I struggled to come up with an idea that fit the topic, and weeks that I wasn’t in the mood to write, but I’m proud that I stuck with it. It is arguably the most worthwhile genealogical endeavor I’ve undertaken to date. I’ve always wanted to write my family history and do something with all of the pictures, facts, and snippets of information I amassed, but didn’t know where to start. This challenge gave me the needed framework and motivation. As long as I got something down each week, it didn’t need to be perfect. Even when I knew exactly what I was going to write about, questions always cropped up during the process, which led to further research. Sometimes this led to discovering entirely new stories. I am looking forward to the new year and more opportunities to research, write, and share my discoveries. Thank you, Amy Johnson Crow, for creating the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, and thanks to everyone who took the time to read my blog. Whether you read one post or all of them, I appreciate it.
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