Genealogy, I am doing it

Yesterday, Jackson came into the kitchen and said "Mom, what is harpies? I just saw a commercial for harpies medication and I wondered what it is." Oh, you mean herpes. Oh dear. That is a conversation I am not quite ready to get into with him. I know he is 12 and the time is fast approaching (probably long past) but how do you explain STD's to your kids? We reassured him that it is a disease he does not need to worry about getting right now and sent him on his way. Waaahhh. I want him to go back to being 5.

On a lighter side, I have been reading the Joseph Smith biography, "Rough Stone Rolling." It has been very fascinating to learn a little more about Joseph and the times he lived. During my reading one night I discovered that the town where he spent a large amount of his childhood, and where he had his first vision, Palmyra, is just 12 miles from where I knew some of Rollin's ancestors lived. It got me interested to see if they were living there at the time of Joseph Smith's vision and receiving the gold plates, so I dug into the genealogy I have gathered.

Rollin is 1st generation church member, so there has not been a lot of work done on his family line. That was exciting to me when we first got married, because my family work has been done by so many people going back to the time of the pilgrims, and I thought I wouldn't have much of a chance to ever do genealogy work. In the past as I have worked on Rollin's genealogy, I haven't gotten very far, not much past his great-grandparents, but this time I had so much success! It was so cool to all of the sudden find these people. This is an actual copy of the 1900 census which lists Rollin's great-grandpa who I could not find for the life of me for 10 years and then all the sudden, here he is!



There are some interesting facts in Rollin's family's past, and I wish I could sit and talk to these people and hear their stories. That is what is so exciting about genealogy work. I have a chance to just imagine the people and what made them make the choices they did, or how they responded to the life changing events they were faced with. For example, Rollin's great-great-grandpa died while when he fell off the roof of a construction project he was working on. He was 24 and left behind his wife and 4 children. Rollin's great-great-grandma had to send three of her children to live with relatives because she had no way to provide for them. How tragic is that? I would love to hear her story.

Anyway, I am still working on getting back to the 1820's and 1830's in upstate New York with Rollin's line. I am pretty close thanks to some recent developments. Once I find out if they were actually living there, I would love to see if they were in some way involved with or at least knew about the Smiths. Knowing some of Rollin's relatives like I do, it wouldn't surprise me to find out his great-great-great grandpa carried a bucket of tar or a bag of feathers to crazy Joe Smith's farm one night. Cool, huh?