EP 19 - Healing through Genealogy & Cemetery Rambles

Join Kim and Laura today as they discuss a passing curiosity that led to an amazing history lesson.  Also, the latest discussion of taking names and dates and discovering compassion for your ancestors that leads to understanding and healing.  We mention Amy Johnson Crow, esteemed genealogist, and her discussion of the journey from "who do you think you are" to "why do you think you are".  Fascinating stuff.  We also discuss what's on deck for the next few weeks.  Pour a cup of tea and give some thought to "why do you think you are".  
amyjohnsoncrow.com
findagrave.com

Transcript

Kim: 0:04

Hello and welcome back to Chasing Hazel's Tales, a family history podcast presented to you by two registered nurses, and we're also off-duty genealogy nerds or a K a family historians. I'm Kim McLaughlin.

Laura: 0:19

And I'm Laura Ireland. Hopefully now that spring is here. We hope it's truly sprung after the last snow that we had last night. But you know, we're not, we're not out of the snow woods yet, so to speak. Until at least another month

Kim: 0:35

probably. Yeah. But I just didn't wanna see any snowflakes. They didn't accumulate. It's all gone, but, I'm

Laura: 0:41

done. Yeah. They make us a little sad this time of year, but at least we know they won't last. You know, and just for the record, the all-time latest measurable snowfall in Caribou, Maine was May 25th, 1974, when two-tenths of an inch of snow was observed. So we do have a little bit of time before we're out of the woods, but things are on the uptick. I think we're, I think we're good.

Kim: 1:04

I think I'm ready to have my snow tires taken off. Yes, I'm done with the noise. Still may

Laura: 1:11

time to pack away the big coats and the Yep. Hats and the mittens and all that.

Kim: 1:15

Right. I'm very ready. So from last week I'm gonna make a few corrections and I hate to do it, but maybe I wasn't right. maybe

Laura: 1:25

you were partly right. Maybe

Kim: 1:28

you know, So we were talking about, we were talking about the, the Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, New York. And my husband and I both share a line family history in that area, and one of his family names was Orser. And of course it was noted in some of my, in some of my genealogy records, but I thought that it had morphed, from the name arse, which just gave us all a chuckle, A R S E. And I thought, oh, that's, that's, that's good It was worth a good laugh. Anyway, it was, Andy was just a little offended. Are you sure it's arse? But actually it from, I went back and I read, and it's A E R S E, which does sound probably still pronounced the same

Laura: 2:11

Yeah,

Kim: 2:15

Oh, and then I went on, I said, well, I, I must have seen it somewhere. And I went back and I, I found it again. And there is another place, some, and I should have written it down, but there was another place that said A E R S E and a R S E are both variants of that name. So we can call him arse,

Laura: 2:34

But he might not like

Kim: 2:35

it. Well, he might not like it, but secretly, right. I was right. I'll just take that, that little pat on the back. That's right. One little victory, Oh, and I also was talking, I was trying to get Laura to guess how many trees that I had created on ancestry.com over the years, because I researched this, I researched that and the next thing you know, I've got a bunch of family trees. And I knew it was close to a hundred. but I said, well, I'll have to go back and physically count them, but I have pages and pages and pages of trees, so I did count them all, and it's 89 trees on ancestry.com over the years, and I don't think I've ever deleted one, not one. If I looked it up, unless somebody wanted me to, I would do that if they wanted me to. But you know, and also I was thinking, I have a friend that was interested maybe in doing some family research, but they really don't wanna spend money on all these subscriptions. And I, I had a thought, you know, people can make their own family trees. You can buy software to put on your le your desktop, and you never have to pay another dime. You can just keep track of it that way. Or you can do it paper and pencil like I did many, many years ago. You can do whichever you like and it can be cost very little money. But then you say, well, how do I find the records that I'm looking for? Well, you can either write letters or look on the internet for any free sites, which again, we talked about family search being free, but there's also. The, the major sites, whenever there's a holiday, let's just say like Memorial Day Veterans Day 4th of July, things like that. They all, one or all of'em will have some sort of special where you can look for three days free. You can do research and look at their documents for free. So like Ancestry, find my past, my heritage newspapers.com, which is fun cuz we found that stuff last week that, that was fun on newspapers. And they'll just have free weekends. So if you're thinking about, you know, trying to do this and trying not to put too much money into it, but you're interested just start your tree. And then if you go to Facebook or to their webpage, you can sign up for emails and you'll get emails or alerts that that say, Hey, we've got a free weekend coming up, or A DNA test is on sale. Or, you know, you could try and do things a little more you know, Cheap. A little more cheaply. Cheaply. There we go. And that way you don't have to spend a lot of money on something that is just a maybe a, an interesting pastime for you. Right. But so I just wanted to give that out. Just, just sign up for their emails or sign or like them. on Facebook, like their page, and then you'll see when they have specials coming up and you can do things for free. So that's a good idea. It is a good, so keep track like you, who you wanna look up, like the Arses, You wanna do research on the Arses and who wouldn't save, save it all up for that weekend. They also, there's a website called Fold three, which is for military records. And so they also will have, things like that have sales. So I think you should just keep these things in mind and once you get to one, you can look up a bunch of'em and just like their pages, and then find out when they're free and do some research so everybody can do it. And everybody can do it free if they need to, if or if they have an interest. So that was just my little helpful hint for the week. Also last week we did a little tidbit where I just kind of, sometimes I, I call'em tidbits because they're instances when I just take a little bit of genealogy, curiosity and I find something pretty cool. And I'm always curious. I always say, Hmm, hmm, what's that name mean? Or Where were they? And who's your mother? Who's your grandfather? Well,

Laura: 6:11

there's a lot of good stories out.

Kim: 6:13

There are, and, and because I have, you know, ancestry Plus I have subscriptions to other things I sometimes it's just quick and easy for me to boop just real quick, put something online, do a little search and find out something really cool. I did that last week with Taylor, so, but this week I want to tell you about something I did during C O V D. You know, when we had the lockdown, one of my favorite activities was going to cemeteries and I would record grave sites for Find A Grave. and Find A Grave is a website that's owned by ancestry.com that allows people to create memorials. Meaning, you know, it's basically your details about deceased persons, and then you put the location of the grave on the site. It's free. That's another thing that's free. You can look up anybody on there. And even if you want to contribute, if you say, Hey, I'm right beside this cemetery. Maybe I'll record a few, a few headstones. It's free. You just have to sign up for an account. But anybody can search on. You just have to know that the data that's in there is user entered, you know, so it's not necessarily official from say, a town office or an archive. It's user entered. So I think at this point,

Laura: 7:19

and some people are very quick. To enter things Exactly. Even for people who are not their family.

Kim: 7:24

Exactly. So you don't, and you don't have to be a family member to enter the information. You could just go and say, Hey look, there's Joe and here's his stone and it has not been recorded on. Find a grave in this cemetery. I'm gonna put it in there in case someone's looking. Because sometimes people look, they don't know exactly where to find their ancestors' graves and they'll just do a search. Right. Or

Laura: 7:45

maybe they live in Montana. and they're like, Hey, I'd like to see my grandmother's stone. Mm-hmm. And if it's on Find A Grave, then

Kim: 7:52

they can see it, they can see it and know where it is, and kind of get a, mm-hmm. you know, just a mental picture of what, where it is. So I would do that during Covid lockdown. And we'll get to the little bit of a controversy over that in just a minute, but What I did was Andrew and I would go to ancestor's graves during Covid lockdown because we couldn't go hang out with anybody. We would just go outside. It was a great way to be outside. We could do all these good deeds, right? We'd clean gravestones and we would enter, I would enter tons that I didn't even know, but I didn't have. I was just outside and it was easy to do. So I, I got to calling those, my cemetery rambles, meaning I would just ramble. I, I'd go for. and I have two or three pretty big cemeteries in, in you know, within walking distance of my house. So one day I was doing a cemetery ramble. And I was just looking for things I could enter on, find a grave. And I came across the stone and decided to check if it had been documented. And I, I had no connection to the name, and the name was Widrow, w i d r o w. But for some reason, I looked at the stone, it kind of spoke to me. I don't know, I, there was something about that stone I just stopped. And the find a grave memorial was on there, but there were several people on that stone and only two were mentioned. So one. two or three others, like the children that hadn't been mentioned. So I said, well, I can do this. And, but what I did was I, I went to the back of the stone and I noted that there was a married daughter on the stone, but there was no husband, but a married daughter. And I thought, well, that's, you know, just gave me a little pause for a second and I

Laura: 9:23

said, right. Like, strange, why is she on the parents' stone and not with her husband

Kim: 9:28

or, exactly. That was exactly my question. Like, why? Why is she here and he's not. Mm-hmm. But, so anyway, I just knew that it had hadn't been done, so I took the pictures and I went home and I generally, I'll take the pictures on my phone, but I come back to my desktop. and I enter the pictures there so I can type easy, it's easier to see and all that. So but then I found out there was more to this story. So I came home, I went on find a grave and I looked, and her name was Mrs. Lois Francis Widrow Levitan. And she had died so young and but then it wasn't mentioned on the stone, but I did it. I did find that it was her, based on her date of birth and her date of death, on Fina A Grave Memorial did say that she had died in the Coconut Grove Nightclub, fire of November 28th, 1942. And of course,

Laura: 10:18

An infamous, it's an infamous fire. Had you heard

Kim: 10:21

of it before? I had, yeah. And I may have heard of it, but it never

Laura: 10:25

stopped. I didn't know details, but I knew that it was a bad fire.

Kim: 10:28

Right. So I said, well, in Boston. Yeah. What's, you know, this poor woman, she was so young and What was the Coconut Grove Nightclub fire? So off I went to Wikipedia. All I had to do was put that in once, and I learned that it was the second deadliest single building fire in US history that claimed 492 lives. Can you imagine one nightclub? No. 492 lives. So Coconut Grove was a popular nightclub in Boston that attracted all sorts of famous and infamous people, and where the owners had ignored many fire regulations, contributing factors in the fire that night that caused such such death and destruction. The contributing factors were double the legal capacity. doors were locked to prevent entry, which also prevented exiting. So meaning they didn't want people to sneak into the building, so people actually couldn't get out either. Substandard. So outrageous. Outrageous, isn't it? Right? I mean, in this day and age we know, but, but they were just trying to save the dollars, right? They didn't want people cheating, right? Who knew? Anyway, so they had substandard electrical wiring, flammable gas. and lots of flammable materials, you know, like what could go wrong, right? Yeah. Everything, everything went wrong. So I did do a little TikTok about it and I had all kinds of pictures and things that I had collected, and I may share my TikTok on my Facebook page just so that people can see, or on social media so that people can see how I arranged it. But it did have the pictures from Google and it was. Devastating. So after that fire, the fire codes were changed, emergency preparedness standards were created. Tough laws and penalties for code infractions were implemented, and major medical advances were made in the treatment for burn victims and other traumas, including the first mention of P T S D research. and the first time that penicillin was put to use in the general population. So also as a nurse, you and I would know there's a chart that we use to determine the percentage of burns that cover a body. Mm-hmm. there's a chart and you would, you would just calculate how much of the body was affected by burns. That's how they come up with 50% of your body, 40% of the number. Right. that chart was based on the experience of treating victims of the Coconut grove fire. So from that, what they learned by treating all those burn victims, they came up with more burn research and also how to calculate how much a person was burned. So, That was horrible. It was just horrible and such a tragedy and such lessons. I mean, I just, I, I never knew. And by looking at it, you know, looking at one stone in all

Laura: 13:15

in my right, if you hadn't looked at that one stone and seen that woman's name and noted her age and all that, right, then you would never have gone down this rabbit hole.

Kim: 13:24

No, never. But, but then I, I sat on, on my TikTok, I have no idea why I stopped at that stone. and was interested in her name. Mm-hmm. had no idea. Mm-hmm. So so the one thing I wanted to mention about find a grave is what happens is find a grave is user information. So you sign up for an account, you get to create memorials and people on there. Thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of memorials that they have created because there were so many cemeteries and data to entry, it was all done Free. People just did it on their own. They volunteered. And so what would happen is what has happened recently is, and it even happened with our mother. If you think about it, Laura, that's

Laura: 14:08

that's what I was referring to earlier when I said somebody, some people jump right on

Kim: 14:14

that quickly, right? We pe what happens is someone dies and there, recently it has happened that people that die in these mass tragedies, these mass shootings, the next within 20 minutes, their names are on there, memorial's been created and the family hasn't even had time to blink. before their, I don't understand why people would do that. I don't. I don't either. And things are fairly anonymous, so it's not like I can tell that Laura made that. I have no idea. Right. It's not like

Laura: 14:41

people make money for No. Making these memorials, all they did was make me

Kim: 14:44

mad. Right. So, They'll, they'll put these, these trauma or these tragedy victims on there before. Or if it's someone famous, someone famous who has just recently died, bing, they have, you know, quickly someone has put that on, find a grave. And so the, the the people who use it are kind of outrage. That this happens and they feel as though there should be like a moratorium, that if someone dies, you give them three months. You cannot create that memorial if you create a memorial that's not yours. If you can't prove that you're a relative. then you shouldn't be creating it. Give a chance for the family to own that memorial and to create one, or to have some peace until you know the tragedy has gone by.

Laura: 15:28

You know? Right. Not to be shocked by that immediately after, like, who are you and why are you documenting about my mother?

Kim: 15:34

That's how right. And that's how we felt because our mother had died on the 11th of August. And by that, and that was early morning. What time? I mean, it was six in the morning. Right? Somewhere, somewhere around there. Very early. That's when we found out. Yep, yep. And so because I was a find a grave member, I thought, well, great, I'll make her, I'll make her memorial and I'll put the information in. But no, someone had already created it and I went and looked and they created it the night my mother died. The obituary hadn't even come out yet. Or if it had, it was online at night. So that's upsetting to many, many people. But they, but I think find Agra has taken some steps so that that can be averted. Now they're trying to make moratoriums, you can't create this unless you could prove you're a relative. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's, it's not a good thing yet, but they're working on it anyway. Yeah. That I like, find a grave because then I can see graves or find out you, it's a great way to find out where your ancestors are. Right. Yeah. Lots of good in, that's also driven by volunteers and it's hard to, hard to manage maybe. I don't know. It's, I bet it's gotten really big. Yep. But enough about that. I did wanna mention that Laura and I have been, we've been talking about all kinds of family connections. We love'em all and it's really fun. And we be, we want to continue to bring you great stories, but a topic acrossed our desks this week that made us wanna share it with you. I received an email from Amy Johnson Crow. She's an esteemed genealogist, well known in the United States, and you can follow her on Amy Johnson crow.com. But she sent an email and she was making a note of exactly what Laura and I have been doing for quite some time now. We shift from taking names and dates. To taking those people and adding stories to better know them. So kind of like you mix history and genealogy and you get family history and then that leads to discoveries. Much like Laura and I have made about our grandmother, which we never knew, but you, you know, if you do enough research and talk to enough people, you can kind of make a picture. So So we've made many discoveries and we had a feeling of course, of the unthought known where something just didn't make sense in our family history. And after researching and discovering sometimes these things can come into focus and the unthought known fades or is relieved, and then there's empathy that kind of comes in after that. You kind of

Laura: 17:50

get idea. It helps you to understand what happened before you and right. And so it's, and to understand why you're, where you.

Kim: 17:57

Exactly, exactly. And so it's just a, it's just a, she put into an email exactly what Laura and I have been doing and we wanted to share it with you, just so I think Laura could take it a little step further. Right. Yeah.

Laura: 18:11

It, it's I really liked that email by the way, and would encourage anybody to, to take a look at her website. But one of the takeaways for me was, you know, it's very important to acknowledge. These things that affect many families, and it's called generational trauma. And you know, of course, I did a Google search and tried to see what the real definitions were and all that. And from the talkspace.com page, they had some really good information on it. So generational trauma is the transference of traumatic experiences or stressors from one generation to the next. And it can happen through direct experience or witnessing something violent, say, or living in an environment where violence is a constant threat. but it's also something that can be passed down unwittingly, you know, to the subsequent generations through learned survival behavior. Like a person who grows up with violence, extreme poverty, alcoholism, or drug addiction in their family, they develop survival or coping mechanisms that may or may, may or may not be healthy. This then impacts the next generation through their behavior among, for one thing, but. There's also a good question about you know, whether or not it can be passed on through dna.

Kim: 19:31

Kimberly. Yes. And that's where I go, what dna. So I kind of always perk up when I read studies about trauma that can be what, what they call encoded in your dna. N a, it's, I think, I don't know, I don't know how old a science is, but it's fairly new. And the artists articles come around from time to time and I, whenever I see'em, I read'em. But there is a theory that maybe. Or maybe indications that when a person experiences something, that response or the response to that stressor can be encoded in the d n a, meaning the off offspring could potentially react the same way due to a new response learned and actuated in the future. technical jargon, but it makes sense. Yes. I'm interested because class I took in college that was focused, it was called Women in Europe. It was a, it was a gender studies thing, but they were discussing females in Europe that had endured trauma. So and we learned from the studies of women. in the Bosnian war that showed their responses to trauma. And they studied twins that had the exact same experience, but one could show resilience and the other one would suffer horribly. And then they asked the questions, well, what makes one family member resilient and the other one not? And so, that's where they thought d n A and generational trauma comes in. Some of the responses are learned, and some may not be, but, or some might just be encoded. It's just a nerd topic that Laura and I could go on and on about. But you know, it's there, there are studies ongoing that say there are trying to determine, because they can get so much into DNA now, they can learn so much whether or. this is something that has, this response has been encoded to a certain trigger, whether it be an environmental trigger, and it could be anything. It could be poverty, it could be hunger, it could be, and, and Laura made some pretty good examples. You know, if you were talking about like the cr, the stock, the stock market crash, people lose their money and then they respond in different ways and they just hoard things and try to save everything they can. Cuz because they were so.

Laura: 21:31

Oh, I don't think I've gone through that yet. Okay. But I'm about to.

Kim: 21:34

But, so coming up is Laura's topic on the stock market crash. Stay tuned. It's coming right now. That's right.

Laura: 21:46

Here it is. You know, so many people, just like we did begin researching their ancestors and they may have traumatic or unsuspected truths uncovered during that process. And you might learn things that help to explain the idiosyncrasies of your family. And you know, one of the easiest and quickest examples I can think of, because we certainly knew people like this, are people who were raised by parents who grew up in the depression. Exactly. They just, Mm-hmm. their responses were different. They had a different mindset. And, you know, the people who washed out their tinfoil and, you know, only bought 10 grapes instead of 15. Mm-hmm. remember the lady that mom worked for? So the, you know, they grew up learning to be fearful of losing their money, possibly mistrustful of the banks. or, you know, they might be that relative or friend that kept all their money stuffed in a mattress or under a floorboard in their house. No. So

Kim: 22:43

but, and you didn't, and you didn't talk about their money? There was nothing doing my money. No, no.

Laura: 22:47

My money, right? No, they, they weren't telling anybody about those details. Yeah, no. So, and I wanted to explain that briefly because on the Talkspace website, you know, one of the ways they say to heal the generational. is, you know, after you first identify that it exists, is to educate yourself about your history and learn about what happened in previous generations to help you better understand your experiences. So I can, you know, pretty much say that's, what a lot of people might go through. Quite a few people might go through when they begin to research their families. You know, or even just their own history of their people or whatever it is that you're gonna do. You know, and they go on to say that self-care is very important. Connecting with others and seeking professional help if you're struggling to cope with your findings of the trauma. But those are all ways of helping to heal that generational.

Kim: 23:41

And I think if you think like if you think back to finding your roots with Henry Lewis Gates Jr. Mm-hmm. some of those shows, they some of those findings, they find celebrities who have had some pretty traumatic ancestors you know, ex ancestor experiences. And it's kind of takes you, takes, it kind of just sits you down a minute or, or takes you back. And I think that was evident on those shows, on some of those. Right, right.

Laura: 24:08

And you know, they also say that it might become a source of pride for you and lead to a connection to those who came to before you. Mm-hmm. I dunno about you, Kim, but I think I can definitely say I feel more of a connection to those who came before us after doing all this research and learning about our ancestors. And I think it was just a few weeks ago that I said, you know, that I now feel connected to our, our grandmother Hazel, the one we never met. And now her birthday's a special day for me because of that connection. And I wanna, you know, make sure I remember all of that on that special day for her. But anyway, all of this information about generational trauma is very interesting to me. It's a great topic to, to dive into. And it reminds me, reminds me a little bit of the, the, the, I don't wanna really call it simple, but that's, it's a, a simple phrase for a campaign used usually to talk about abuse. And they tell you, you know, they wanna break the cycle, so, right. You know, if you acknowledge, educate, and heal. You have the best chance to break the cycle of generational trauma,

Kim: 25:13

right? And I, and I made up my own little phrase I'm, because some people have wonderful trees and great memories and have really don't have, you know, much to discover. You know, out of the ordinary. And I used to call,

Laura: 25:30

I think there are

25:31

people

Kim: 25:31

out there like that. Yeah. There are, but I, I would always, I would always call it, in my mind it was like generational opulence, meaning they had, for me it meant, just meant that they had so many details, so many things to know and to learn and to, and, and that if you know that from a very young age, it sets you up for some sort of confidence in your, in your. In your own history, right? I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but for me it was opulence in that you, there is much to know about your family and you don't have to go looking because it's already been recorded. Right? So I think that, that you could quote that one to me. Generation we will. Yeah. All right. So,

Laura: 26:15

you know, we kind of went from who do you think you. to, why do you think you are? I think that's, that becomes the question. Like, I think you start out, who do you think you are? You know, learning who your ancestors are, right? And then as you delve into the details all the nuts and bolts and of their relationships and all the things that went on before you, I think that really helps you understand why you are so right. Anyway, it's a work in progress and interesting stuff. If, if anybody. you know, wants to look into it on their own.

Kim: 26:49

So there was one article that I had saved from some time ago and I'll just read, I'll just read the title cuz that's all you need to know. The the article was written by Helen Parker Drabble. And this was written in 2021 and the article's name is How Key Psychological Theories can Enrich our Understanding of our Ancestors and Help Improve Mental. for present and future generations of family historians perspective. So basically how learning where you're from and how you got here and you know, the things people had to do to stay afloat or to carry on. Mm-hmm. can make you help you with your mental health once you learn that kind of stuff.

Laura: 27:31

I mean, I just have to say I completely

Kim: 27:32

agree. Yep. I do. at least, you know, so that's been our experience evidently. So I don't know if anybody else would be, would be interested in that, but that's why we decided to, since it came across our desk, we decided to share it with you and you know, so if you, you know, take a few hints and try and figure out, you know, we've given a few hints over the last couple weeks if you want any help trying to figure out how to do family history. There's lots of help out there and let us know, right?

Laura: 27:58

So, Our hope is that, you know, finding your family history brings you joy and discovery, and that in turn you find yourself more connected and understanding of those who came before you. We took that leap and discovered Hazel and many others.

Kim: 28:13

Many others. Hmm. It's been, it's been fun and we still have more, we, we have things to do. So there's a lot of ancestors. Yeah. there's a lot of ancestors, but they all combine. Yeah. You know, to. to put us where we are. Right. So I was thinking about covering general Johnny Burgoyne and our connection to him in up in our next episodes, next couple of episodes, and it's, it's a big topic. And I've been, and that's the only reason I got into this in the first place was because I started researching General Johnny Burgoyne and

Laura: 28:46

how, right. I think that episode should be called Drop the Mic. Or Mic Drop

Kim: 28:51

Get Ready. It's a big topic. It's a lot of research. It's 35 years because it's, I've been doing it for 35 years and I'm, I wonder if there's anyone that has studied his life more than me. is there, can there be, there might be maybe a historian. Yeah. But not the fun way like I do. Like I, right. They wanna know how many battles he was in and that kind of stuff. That's all important, but I wanna know where his kids are and did he have any children? Where are they, how many times he was married and where he lived and, yeah, that's right. And the, did you go to paupers prison? Because I need to know And why aren't there good birth records? That's right. or Death Records? I, there's one death record. Don't need. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm gonna, I think we're gonna dive in and you're gonna find out what kind of gentleman Johnny was. I made that up myself. you crack yourself up. Crack myself up. How? My question is, how can we be related to him and is it possible? So I'm gonna jump in. Laura's coming with. Yep. And we're gonna invite, there's, there's a lot of Burgoynes that need to, we're just gonna swim with it. We're gonna swim with, we need people to jump in with us and tell us what's going on. So, all right.

Laura: 30:02

So until next week, if you have any questions, give us a shout out at chasinghazelstales@gmail.com. And if you get a minute, please give us a review. Rate us or follow us on your favorite podcast platform. And until next week,

Kim: 30:19

goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye,