How the internet opened up the secrets of my family’s past
Anna Hess is my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother. Yep.
That’s right.
When first entering into this journey, I figured that the chances of finding out that kind of information were virtually impossible. Growing up as a kid in a large family, I always heard stories of my crazy, Great-Aunt Agnes and my closet-homosexual Great-Uncle, George but as a teen, I learned to take these stories with a grain of salt as they usually were the result of many a glass of wine at an Easter dinner.
Deep down, I hoped that with luck, the truth of my genealogy would reveal that my great Aunt was the Black Dahlia or perhaps I had a connection to King Henry VIII.
After seeing a commercial for Ancestry.ca, my interest was rekindled. They promised to find records, photos and everything you ever wanted to know about flaming Uncle George with the click of a mouse.
And you know what, they were truthful. Within hours of logging on, it was two in the morning and my family tree was unfolding before my eyes. Little green leaf icons were flickering as the screen lit up with ancestral hints. The names of my relatives were popping up in French-Acadian church records in New Brunswick and Danish emigration paperwork.
The Irish side of the family, (The Casey’s) seems to be a bit harder. As I have learned in my childhood, gossip and family secrets are closely guarded by the church and the powers that are responsible for records, but my mother’s side of the family was ripe for the picking.
And it gets better.
"We're all related to each other somewhere down the line. I'm just trying to find out where and with who."
-Heather Jaremko, Genealogist
It turns out, my great, great grandfather, John Glambeck, (who I was well aware of,) was not only a postal worker in Chicago in the late 1800’s but the editor of a Danish-language, socialist newspaper, Arbejderen, which translated means “The Worker.”
The Dane was such a revolutionary that the Glenbow Museum has archived his writings and stores a massive collection of family photos and keepsakes that no one who is currently alive in my family, knew about.
Isn’t that a kicker?
This website is like crack-cocaine. When I just want to log-off and go to bed, another leaf materializes and I need to keep going. I worry that in the future I might be the subject of a reality-TV show showcasing a new phenomenon of the 21st century: genealogy website addiction.
After a few phone calls, I find out I’m not the only one with this obsession.
Now an expert in lineage, Heather Jaremko has been working on her family tree for over 30 years. After going to a genealogy workshop years ago, her passion was ignited.
“We’re all related to each other somewhere down the line. I’m just trying to find out where and with who,” Jaremko says.
She explains that the pull for her is playing the role of the detective.
“When I started my research 30 years ago, computers were not the vogue,” Jaremko states.
It has taken her many hours sitting in libraries, slaving over microfilm and mailing away for records to get to where she is.
Even with websites such as Ancestry, lots of people have plenty of difficulty charting their roots.
According to Christine Hayes, a reference assistant who specializes in genealogy with the Calgary Public Library, the internet can only get you so far.
“It’s nice to think you can do everything on the internet, but we’re not there yet. You will eventually have to look at micro-film,” Hayes says.
Another setback can occur if you are looking for records in a country that doesn’t use English as a first language. “Every place has its challenges,” she says.
There’s one thing anyone who has had the buzz of finding just a piece of their past knows, and that is it’s incredibly rewarding to find information that you were looking for, but didn’t know you were looking for it.
One thing’s for sure, until I find out the truth about Uncle George and Aunt Agnes, (or great Uncle Henry VII,) I’ll probably be into this for awhile.
 After much research, I was able to trace my family tree back to the 17th century. |
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