Spokane

Curiosity drives genealogists
Heritage Hunting: Readers share with Beverly Smith Vorpahl what made them want to research their ancestries.

Beverly Smith Vorpahl
The Spokesman-Review

Curiosity is what drove Debbie Chambers and Judith Jones into genealogy. These two Heritage Hunting readers responded to a recent request to share favorite genealogy stories.

Jones was only a kid when she began asking questions about her ancestors: What happened to them during the American Revolution? Which side of the Civil War did they fight? Did they travel west by wagon train?

Her questioning was persistent all the while growing up, on into marriage and motherhood. And once she had time to dig a little deeper, Jones answered her own questions by prowling around libraries, digging into family lore and searching the Internet. Her tenaciousness tracked one line back to 1668. More intangible discoveries provided reason that her olive skin is from one ancestral grandmother who was half Cherokee. She learned that a ruptured gallbladder was fatal to her great-grandmother, convincing Jones to have her own bad gallbladder removed.

When Debbie Chambers earnestly started doing genealogy, the only thing she knew about her grandfather, William Ellis, is that he was born in Utah and left home at 15 because he disliked his stepmother. Nothing else.

Chambers was 10 when her grandfather died. Two letters, written in a foreign language, were found in his belongings. An aunt didn't want them transcribed, saying that if Grandpa Ellis wanted his family to know what was written, he would have told them. Chambers never forgot the letters, and as an adult, learned that they had finally been translated. The letters, written in Swedish and postmarked in Finland, were signed "Your loving Mother, Louisa B."

Again, the Internet provided a happy ending. A generous genealogist who read Chambers' query on a Finnish Web site looked up her ancestors' records and learned that her grandfather, William Ellis, was actually William Backlund. (The Ellises wonder if he chose that name because he came through Ellis Island.)

The Finnish Internet angel also found the farm of her great-grandfather as well as living relatives. She learned that her great-grandfather had also immigrated to America.

Later that year, Ellis, her father, uncle and sister flew to Finland to meet their newfound relation, see the family farm, the church where her ancestors worshipped, the school her grandfather attended, and her great-grandmother's grave.

"And I was given a most precious keepsake," Chambers wrote, "a ring that had belonged to my great-grandmother."

Back home, Chambers looked up Backlund on the Internet and found her great-grandfather in the town where her grandpa had said he was born.

She also unearthed a little family gossip: Great-grandfather Backlund, who originally intended to return to Finland, had, instead, stayed and remarried without divorcing his Finnish wife.

Chambers wrote: "Great-Grandpa was a bigamist!"