People and Books

As a teen, my favorite haunt was the public library. My family often moved, so my local libraries ranged from a fairly large-size building--a place to get lost among myriads of towering shelves of books--to a small-town, tiny, two-room building with a scanty collection reminiscent of a thrift store offering. Being a year or so before I started into genealogy, my interests were more in fiction and non-fiction than reference sections. Despite the adage "you can't judge a book by its cover," I would be introduced to many of my favorite books by wandering through the bookshelf aisles, finding an interesting title--or cover illustration--and seeing if the book's plot outline interested me enough to read the whole story. Philosophical in those days, I contemplated all the fascinating, unread stories hidden behind each spine cover in the endless sea of shelved books. People were much like books, I mused, with a yet (to me) unread story behind each cover, the unfathomed life stories of strangers in a crowd. I put these thoughts in my teen journal: "Each person is a story that began long, long ago."

As years passed and I began tracing my family--not just ancestors, but distant cousins, too--I found my old saying truer. I've been chronicling countless descendants of one common ancestor. Some people were popular in their community and have much written about them in local histories, giving me their life story. For other people, I only have a name and, if I'm lucky, vital dates for them. But people are more than just names. When I look at these "bare" names, I'm curious to hear the rest of the story.

Most of these "forgotten cousins" are descendants of female Loys. After all, many early genealogists seemed to care only for the carried-on surname. Thus, only male generations were recorded in detail, with nothing but a name and maybe birth year for the daughters. But what about the daughters? What happened to the young girl after the last census where she appeared? Did she die young, live a life of singleness, or marry? Did she have children? Did she stay in the locality or move elsewhere? Or what about the son who "disappeared" from family records just because he went West or was the "black sheep"? What happened to these after they were "last seen" in census?? Where are their descendants today? Who are they? (Maybe, unbeknownst, your best friend or neighbor--or the co-worker you can't stand!) Do these people today carry on family traits we both inherited from a common ancestor from long ago? Or family stories? Are they trying to research our common line, but unable to find the woman's maiden name--info I have--while I'm trying to locate her married surname??

Each individual's story connects with the story of each generation back. And forward as well, depending on the researcher's viewpoint. In my quest to locate "forgotten cousins," I search for the continuing story. And when "a lead" helps me locate them and their descendants in later census and current to the 1930, it increases chances of finding living descendants or their close kin. And then, at last, maybe I can hear the rest of the story.