I wish I knew more about my forbears. Both of my father’s parents had ancestor who emigrated to Oregon from the east. His father (my Grandfather) was born in Lacygne, Kansas in 1884. They moved west when my Grandfather was a youth. My father’s maternal grandfather was born in 1848 in Benton Co. Missouri. His maternal grandmother was born in Marion Co. Iowa in 1850. They didn’t move to Oregon until 1880. Besides those relatives there were dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins spread out from Pennsylvania to Alabama whose stories I don’t know. Surely some of them had interesting Civil War stories to tell.
My paternal grandmother was the family historian. Over the years she gathered up all the documentation and notes on our ancestors. One day in a fit of pique (she had early onset of Alzheimer’s) she burned it all.
The way I see it preceding generations were too busy keeping body and soul together and keeping their families fed and housed to spend much time pondering or recording the times they lived through.
And even today, with the amazing tools we have available to us at the click of a mouse, it takes a lot of time and effort and detective work to ferret out what information is out there. And even then, once you do go to all that trouble, there are always huge gaps in your knowledge.
But man, what an excursion through American history it is. Well worthwhile. I would recommend it to anybody.
I’ve spent almost a decade now on the hunt, and my perception of my own history, the history of my family, and the history of my country, has been vastly broadened and deepened.