Genealogy Angels

“Back in the day,” researching your family tree meant writing to courthouses and state health departments, visiting local libraries to read through city directories and the local paper, and traveling far and wide to cemeteries, churches, and the like. These days, the internet make genealogy so much easier. Want to see the civil registration of birth records from Cenadi, Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy (the ancestral home of the Gimigliano family)? Get a free account from Family Search (www.familysearch.org) and you can print out all the records you want from 1809 to 1910. All pretty terrific. Especially during this pandemic, arm-chair research is cheap and relatively easy. Unfortunately, what you miss out on is the human connection and those “Genealogy Angels” that can make your family research more meaningful and fun.

Here are a couple of little stories about those blessed angels.

Several years ago, I was working on a project for a genealogy class I was taking. I drove a couple of hours out to the Neosho County, Kansas courthouse in Chanute. My target was the Registrar of Deeds office where I located deeds for the farms bought by George Washington Baty (my husband’s second great-grandfather) in 1875 and 1883. I spent the bulk of the morning compiling a list of the documents I wanted and at lunch I gave the list to the office assistant who was responsible for making my copies ($1.50 a page). After lunch, this lovely woman not only had my copies, but also a map of the Earlton cemetery where George and many other family members were buried. What a sweet thing to do! She explained that as she made my copies, she recognized the Baty name from the cemetery where she was a volunteer. A “Genealogy Angel” (in multiple ways) in my midst.

Here’s another one. Several years ago, my sister-in-law’s parents were traveling to Moliterno, a small town in Potenza, Basilicata, Italy and the ancestral home of the Bloise family. They went to the town library where the librarian took a great interest their family research. This lovely woman was so intrigued that she contacted the mayor for permission to open the town archives. The next night she presented Hank and Shirley with his grandfather’s birth certificate! “Italiana Genealogia Angelo.”

My last story was told to me by an old friend who was researching her Kesnar/Kesner ancestors in the Netherlands. She had emailed an official in Amsterdam looking for information. The official not only provided her with what she was looking for, but asked if he could share her email address with another Kesnar/Kesner researcher? Of course, she said “yes.” This other researcher turned out to be a distant cousin who helped her fill out the Kesnar branches of her family tree. Not only that, she and Sjef became good friends, visiting each other homes and sharing many good times until his untimely passing in 2007. All due to a Dutch “Genealogie Engel.” 

Yes, the internet can make your family research MUCH easier. But I hope we never lose that angel-human touch.   

Not a Genealogy Angel, but an angel nonetheless.