Every family has at least one brickwall, and as many
methods of climbing over them. One of my strategies was to write a family
history of one of our lines that ended at that ancestor’s immigration into the
United States.
What an undertaking it became! But it forced me to
re-examine thirty years of evidence and helped me to find some clues I’d
overlooked.
Twenty-six pages later, my data had congealed into a
reasonably decent narrative that I felt I could share with family members,
known and unknown. Now, how to distribute it? Since I’m currently out of work,
it had to be very budget-friendly. Well, I had plenty of stamps and envelopes
and access to online people searches – so I went looking for distant cousins. I
started with just one line – the Maitlands. I had been in contact with one of
the cousins years ago, and was dismayed to learn that he had since passed away.
But his obituary listed the names and towns of his siblings and children, so I
wrote six letters. Well, one of them hit paydirt! I heard from the
granddaughter of Aunt Tillie, my great-grandfather’s older sister. Tillie had
lived with them for a time after her husband passed away.
The cousin shared a few stories with me that
contained some important clues, and I’ll share a few of them here:
“During the second WW, my Mom worked several hours a
day in a cemetery greenhouse. My Mom had
the greenest thumb you could find.
So....Grandma Maitland took care of us kids, or vice versa many
times. She was funny, because she wanted
the neighbors to think that she was earning her keep - she would stand in one
place on the sidewalk with a broom in her hand and sweep periodically. That was
long before senior residences. Altho,
when she lived with Uncle Bill in Delaware, she told me that to keep busy
there, she would take the bus to the Nursing Home to visit the
"girls". She was 10 years
older that most of them were, but they were her friends. I remember visiting at her home when Grandpa
was still living. They had an old pump organ,
which my kid brother and I loved. We
could not reach the peddles and the keys at the same time, so we took
turns. He would play while I pumped the
peddle and then we would change places.
Didn't bother Grandma doing it that way. Grandma Maitland (Wenz) lived
with us about 6 months of the year after Grandpa died. She had two sons, William and Robert Laurie
Maitland, Jr. (my dad). They took turns
caring for her until she died. She told
me, since I was the youngest and would listen, stories about growing up in her
family. She said that they never spoke
anything but German until they went to school.
She taught me one little verse in German that they always insisted she
learn and it still is with me a lot, and she told me about her brother and his
understanding of American idioms. He was
chopping wood and seemed to struggle with it.
They told him he needed more "elbow grease". The next thing they saw was her brother in
the yard greasing his elbows. I always
assumed it was Uncle Ed, who may be your grandfather figure. I remember him well, because he came once in
a while to visit with Matilda. He was a
beautiful person - very large- and very gracious, especially with us a little
kids. He had the biggest hands I ever
remember, but he was a farmer in the Boston area and I assumed that was his
largest."
What a great peek inside my family history – the real
people, not just the names and dates on a page! So, reach out to distant
cousins – you’ll never know what you’ll find!
And the book? Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B47bUrlyCkJhRndzeGx3NlQ4eFk
