by Connie Lynne Smith           

       Do you have a mysterious relative in your family?  Someone nobody ever wants to talk about, and when the person is mentioned, everybody exchanges icy stares and changes the subject?  This is a familiar scenario in many families.  A black sheep uncle.  A disappearing aunt. 

In my case, it was a grandfather, who seemed never to have existed.  My mom acted as though she was hatched out of an egg.  My grandmother acted like she had never even been with a man, let alone bear the child of one.  But, when my sister and I would ask, as any curious child would who is missing a grandpa, “Where is grandpa?”, all we would receive in return were icy stares and Mom would shush us up.  Then she would take us in the other room and tell us to never ask about grandpa again.  

Every chance we got, my sister, and I would sit on the staircase, eavesdropping on the adult conversations.  Through these clandestine spy missions, we learned enough about him to know that he drank and was an alcoholic.  He lived somewhere, locked away, in a hospital.  Mom never knew him, as he had abandoned Grannie before Mom was born.  We knew he had a sister, our Aunt Clara, whom we adored and were all very close to.  And, that’s about it.  We didn’t even know his name and wouldn’t know it for many years.

            So, as children often do, we tucked our curiosity away.  But we always knew that, someday, when we grew up, we would find out who this mysterious man was and where he was.  Life has a way of overtaking you and Mom died young, then Aunt Clara, and then Grannie.  My sister and I would still occasionally wonder about the long lost grandfather that we never knew and who never showed up anywhere.  Was he dead?  In jail?  Locked away in an insane asylum?  How could someone spend their whole life in a hospital?

            Eventually, I followed my life-long interest in writing and began submitting free lance articles to magazines and newspapers.  After a few successes in getting them accepted for publication, my husband decided I was ready for a computer and writing software.  We pitched the old word processor in the basement and I got hooked up to the information highway. 

            Then, one night I was watching the news and Tom Brokaw was on the screen talking about a new website that had just gone online.  I took notice, as this must be important for Tom Brokaw to be mentioning it.  He began the story with a line I will never forget, that went something like this, “Have you got a long lost, mysterious relative that no one ever wanted to talk about and you are dying to find out about?  Well, now you can, as the Mormon Family History Library has gone online today with their family history database.  Now, you can access, in seconds, what previously would have taken a trip the Salt Lake and days scouring through their records.”  

Something inside my brain came awake when he said the part about the long lost, mysterious relative that nobody ever wants to talk about.  Memories of childhood secrets came flooding back.  He was talking to me!  I raced to get a pen and paper and scribbled down the website address, www.familysearch.org.  It was the official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Family History Library.  

The website was soon flooded with hits and you could only stay on a few minutes, if you got on at all.  Then, they would “knock you off” and tell you could not access for forty-five more minutes.  So, I kept at it, putting in any names that I could think of and hoping something would come up.  I was up until the wee hours of the morning because they only allowed me on a few minutes at a time.  Finally I thought of Aunt Clara and typed in her maiden name, which the same as Mom’s¾Berger.  The computer went nuts and flashed before me page after page after page of her family history!  I recognized all the names on the pages as relatives we had heard of or met as small children.  All of Aunt Clara’s brothers and sisters and their children flashed before me.  And, finally, there was her long lost brother, Carl.

The generations of our family went all the way back to County Donegal Ireland in the early 1600’s!  Mom’s grandmother was named Dougan and there were generation after generation of the Dougan clan listed on the history.  I discovered my Irish heritage was real, after hearing of it for years, but wondering where it came from.  I was Irish.  My long lost grandfather was Irish and German.  I discovered we had  tons of relatives we had never even heard of, and hundreds, if not thousands, of cousins.

 I discovered my grandfather’s name was Carl Lockwood Berger.  The mystery man now had a name!  Finally, a part of the mystery was solved.  After that, I couldn’t get enough of the genealogy websites available on the internet.  My neighbor, who did genealogy for a hobby, clued me in to all the websites and historical libraries around town.  I wanted to find out as much about these people as I could.  The websites I used the most, in addition to the Mormon site, were www.ancestry.com, www.genealogy.com and www.rootsweb.com. Our family history had already been placed, by various Dougan cousins, on many of these sites.  I discovered that my sixth great grand-father was in the Revolution and was listed in the Daughters of the American Revolution Patriot index.

My computer overflowed with information and a veritable cornucopia of lost family history was laid at my feet.  I wanted to meet and find some of these people, cousins who had listed all this information.  On the Mormon site, there were several names and addresses listed as having contributed to the family history.  I wrote to all of them, telling them who I was and that I was their cousin.  I heard back from two, who lived in northern Missouri.  The closest cousin was in Platte City, a forty-minute drive.

 I made contact with her and she invited me up to go through all her family history information.  We had a marvelous afternoon and lunch together.  She was a Mormon and she explained to me that in their faith, genealogy was like a sacrament would be to a Catholic.  Knowing your family genealogy was an obligation and a big part of their faith.  She said all of the Dougan line had been placed in the sacred place in Utah, in which they store all this information.  She said they believe that we are all going to be re-united in heaven.  How wonderful!  I was ecstatic.  She assured me we would be welcome, even though we are Catholic. 

She gave me copies of all the files that pertained to my family.  They had always wondered what happened to Carl, who seemed to drop off the family screen, and wondered where his “line” was.  And, I said, “Well, I’m it!”  She copied old family pictures and told me stories about Indian captures and the Revolutionary exploits of the family. 

            I rushed home and made copies of everything for my sister and her family. Another cousin kept in contact by email and also gave me information.  I wanted to find a way to hand down this glorious family legacy to our children, so these people would never be forgotten again.  When I told them of the family legacy, their eyes kind of glazed over, in boredom.  So, being a writer, I decided to put the legacy down in story form by writing a book.  Then, when the next generation of our children wanted to tell their kids about the history of the family, they could have them read the book, instead of  dry facts, a family tree, or a record page out of the Bible.

          Of the three other genealogy tools that I used the most, in unlocking the secrets of my family, one was the Social Security Death Index, which is available online.  If you find a match, you can order the record for a small fee.  They will send you a copy of the original Social Security application and it will have that person’s place of birth, parents’ names, and other valuable information.  The second tool is birth certificates, which can be ordered from the county or city of birth.  These, too, will show the parents’ names and the places and years of their birth.  The third is ordering death certificates.  If you can find out where someone died, you can order the death certificate for a small fee, if you are a family member.  The death certificates are a veritable gold mine containing information such as last known address, birth information, names of parents, birthplaces of parents, cause of death and brief medical history.  I verified the name of my grandfather when I ordered my mother’s birth certificate.  I matched this name with the Mormon records to verify that this was the man I was looking for.

When Missouri didn’t have it, I then found grandfather’s death certificate in the state of Kansas.  It stated that he died in a veterans’ hospital in Kansas, so I knew then that he had to be a veteran of WW I.  The information on his death certificate was given by my Aunt Clara.  I had come full circle.  I then ordered his military record from the military adjunct for the state of Missouri, where he was mustered in and received his mustering out papers at the end of WW I.  I knew his medical history of emphysema, probably from the mustard gas used in the war, heart disease, and mental problems.  I learned when he died and what he died from, and finally, where he was buried.  Our decades old mystery had been solved. 

It wasn’t a big leap to put the drinking problem in with the War and the devastating effects of the mustard gas, and trench warfare.  He lived in the psychiatric ward at the VA hospital, probably suffering from the permanent effects of shell shock.

            I learned of our sixth great grandfather’s Revolutionary exploits from the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) registry, and from family folklore obtained from my cousins.  I even learned how he was almost hanged, but escaped at the last second.  If he hadn’t escaped, I would not have been born!  It was mind-boggling.  So, my book was swiftly taking shape.  I went through each generation of the family and gleaned what I could from the internet, historical libraries, and museums in my area. 

I found a family of pioneer Dougans in a historical library in northern Missouri.  They had a copy of a journal kept by my great-great-uncle, who described the harrowing trip his parents, my third great grandparents, had taken from Indiana on a wagon train to northern Missouri, and their lives on the Missouri prairie.

Then I began my task of taking all these dry facts and spinning them into a yarn, a historical family saga known as, Vanished Glory: A Family in America. Ask about it at a bookstore near you or order at most online booksellers.  Now, do you have a long lost, mysterious relative, a black sheep, you have always been curious about?  Get busy!  Happy hunting.        

 Copyright 2003   Connie Lynne Smith

           All Right Reserved