History's Mysteries (or "Geeking Out On Stuff You Don't Care About...")

I've written from time-to-time about how much I enjoy playing my "Online Video Game..." about how it gives me a connection to history I didn't know I had, about how researching the lives of long-gone family members reveals stories that the best authors and screenwriters couldn't have made up, about how delving into my family's stories helps to make connections with people I already had connections with - but didn't necessarily know about.

When I talk about how much time I spend messing around on Ancestry.com and how much I enjoy it, a lot of people roll their eyes... but it really is kind of like a video game.  I don't mean a first-person-shooter like Halo, or a "brawler" like Dynasty Warriors though... I mean the RPG-type story-driven investigative video games we loved to play in the 80's and 90's - games like Suspended or Police Quest or Gabriel Knight.  Games where the purpose wasn't to gain points or treasure by defeating aliens and monsters, but to unlock a mystery so a story could be told by the time the player finished the game.  That's the fun of messing around on Ancestry.com - solving mysteries and reading stories.

Case in point - I was contacted through the web site by a distant, distant, relative (we're related by a connection about five generations back - I'm sure we share a little DNA, but no more than I share with Louis CK, Prince Charles, or... well, maybe you!)  She had a couple of photos in her possession.  The first was a photo of three Phillips men from, say... 1900 or so.  She knew who they were, and how they were related to my "3rd great grandfather" (after a while, you stop saying "great-great-great..." because, hey, it'd just get ridiculous.)  She had a second photo of three more Phillips men, though, that she couldn't identify... so she asked if I could help.

Here's where the "video game" starts getting interesting.  When I'm doodling around on Ancestry.com, I generally work back along my "line" linearly - my dad to my grandfather to his grandfather etc... sure, there are lots of other relatives that "branch off" from that line, but for the most part I don't pay much attention to them - not because their lives aren't interesting, but there's only so much time I can spend on a hobby like this and hey, I have to make a living, too :)

This investigation required me to take a look at some of those branches on my family tree. The first photo gave me a start - my 3rd great grandfather's three boys Alma, John Dee and Joseph.



Now, I don't know anything about these guys... their brother Edward Charles was my 2nd great grandfather, so he's the one I've always focused on.  Ancestry.com makes looking into people easy, though - all I had to do was add all of my 3rd great grandfather's kids to my family tree (a fairly automatic process where you import information from other people's family trees into yours... you have to pay a monthly fee to do this, but it's not much - and at times like this it's worth it!)  Once I did this, their lives started to take shape - I could find out where they lived from census data, where they were born and where they died, and even some personal details like their professions, newspaper articles about them, and that sort of thing. 

I even found a couple of children that no one else had in their family trees... see, Ancestry.com has digital copies of census pages dating back to the 1800's in their system.  If you want, you can go beyond the catalogued data, and see the actual census page the data comes from.  Looking at one page, I discovered John Dee's wife and two children living in Utah in 1910, more than 20 years after John Dee died... so I added them to their records to the system for other people to find.  Look at me - such a trailblazer :)

Anyway... back to the task at hand: the mystery Phillips men that my relative was wondering about.

As you can see from the border, the photo was taken in Idaho... and most of the Phillips' of that generation were based in Utah.   Looking into the details of the three guys in the first photo, however, I discovered Joseph Samuel was born in Utah, but died in Ucon, Idaho... and he had three sons - Edward Christensen, John D and Joseph M.  Two out of the three were born in Idaho, and one of them died in the same town Joseph Samuel died in... so it's not too far a reach to assume that these three are Joseph Samuel's sons.

Figuring all this out took me an afternoon.  That's it.  But the feeling that went along with making these discoveries, putting the pieces together, and figuring out the mystery - well, I'll put that up against any video game on the market.  Or detective novel.  Or police procedural on TV... because just like the audience for all those mediums, I'm doing the detective work as I watch/ read/ play the story.  I'm trying to figure out the mystery.  And that's a whole heck of a lot of entertainment to get out of an afternoon in my back yard on the laptop.

Now for the sequel... what's the story behind those two children that weren't in the system before...

Pilgrimage

So, you remember the post I published Sunday about family stories, and how important they are? That little meditative ramble was actually a prologue for the next couple of weeks.

As I write this, Trish and I are packing up for a family trip to Arizona with my parents.

Yes, I know, Arizona isn't all that popular at the moment... the state's been in the news a lot lately, and not for the right reasons (in my opinion).

But, land-of-the-crazies or not, Arizona is the soil my family's roots are planted in, and a lot of my extended family are still there. As I said in that previous post, my ancestors' names, birth and death dates are easy enough to find on Ancestry.com or any of a number of online resources... what I can't get from those databases, though, are the stories behind those names and dates. We don't know anything about the people who came before us unless those stories are recorded and shared.

I've always been somewhat interested in my family history; getting it all recorded, however, took on a greater significance when my brother's son Christopher was born. I'd kind of like to know this stuff for my own edification and entertainment... but HE might want to know the story of our family, and tell it to his children, and their children, and... yeah. You get the picture.

Besides, it's a good excuse to spend some time with my mom and dad. We only live six hours away from each other, but if you're a regular reader you know how busy Trish and my life can get. We sometimes go months in between seeing each other - the chance to spend a couple of weeks with them isn't something I want to pass up.

So, if you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, don't be surprised if you see me "check in" at some new and different places over the coming days. We'll be covering a lot of the state over the next couple of weeks; as with other trips Trish and I have taken, I'll probably post some photos on our PhotoBucket page - and heck, I'm taking the Flip with me... I might even stick a couple of videos up on my YouTube channel.

Treat Portland well while I'm gone... I'll see you all in a bit!

I Love A Good Story...

... but, that really shouldn't come as a surprise, given my chosen profession. There are a lot of things to love about acting - the "smell of the greasepaint and roar of the crowd," the chance to put on costumes and do things you might not otherwise do, the chance to work with interesting and creative people... the biggest joy I get out of doing what I do, though, is getting the chance to help tell stories. Storytelling is a vital part of what makes us human; the stories we read, watch, or hear help to put our daily toil into perspective; they help us think about the issues we face in new ways. They inspire us, the scare us, and they help us understand our own lives, and the world we find ourselves in.

I learned early on that history isn't about names, places, and dates; history is about stories, and about the people who made those stories happen. Sure, from an academic perspective it's good to know that Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legions to take control of Rome in 49 BC (yawn...). Those events shaped western civilization, and got us to the place we are today. Ok, whatever.

The STORY about how Caesar was having an affair with Pompey's wife to gain information about when the Roman leader would be out of the city, the risks he took in taking control, his eventual betrayal by the people who put him power... that's the the story in the history. It makes those events live in our hearts and minds, paints a picture of the people behind the historical figures and, most importantly, it makes us think about what we might do if we were in the same situation.

That's what makes historical drama's like HBO's short-lived series ROME so fun to watch... or The Tudors...Deadwood... Once Upon A Time In America... the list goes on and on. The characters and dates those productions chronicle are known facts. The the people involved - the characters who make the story - well, they're what make the story inside the history live for us.

We're all historical figures... and we're all descended from historical figures. Each of us and our ancestors played a part in making the world the way it is today (for good or for ill). We can easily find out that our grandparents were descended from their parents and their parents before them, when they were born and when they died, etc. etc. etc... finding out who those people were, though, is the interesting part. Learning their stories and seeing how their stories intersect and help to shape our own story is what makes the process fun (yeah, really! Fun!)

That's why I've had such a good time watching Who Do You Think You Are on NBC... yes, it seems like yet another "celebrity reality series" that follows famous people around as they traipse about the globe. The true joy of the show, however, is that it captures the wonder, excitement (and, often heartache) that these people experience when they find out the stories behind the people they descended from. Each show tells a few stories about a few people... and all those stories come together to make the person tracing his or her family history.

If you've been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that I've been tracing my own family history for a while now (I frequently call it my "online video game," because just like World of Warcraft or City of Heroes, I pay a small subscription fee and have a whole lot of fun!) See, I finally clicked on one of those ubiquitous Ancestry.com ads you see everywhere on the Internet and started plugging things into their system. It's free to set up an account and add what information you have - you can add people, upload photos, and do all sorts of stuff for nothing - and for a small subscription fee (about $19.95 a month) they give you access to hundreds of records: census forms, shipping manifests, photos and information from other people's family trees... through using the system, some of the people who made up my family's history started to take shape. The more I found out, however, the more questions kept developing. Why did my grandfather leave his family in Indiana and strike out on his own? How did my grandmother - then a nurse in Los Angeles - fall in love with him while he was at her hospital and decide to chuck her career and become a farm wife? Why did my other grandfather, who'd been a construction foreman and engineer, suddenly decide to become a county sheriff?

Those are the stories behind the histories, and piecing them together is, honestly, a blast. Sure, there's a little detective work, but if detective work weren't fun there would be nearly as many mysteries and police procedurals on TV! Finding out who these people were and why they did what they did is inspiring... informative... and tells tales just as exciting as Deadwood or Rome - because you get to know the people behind the history.

So, think about spending a Sunday afternoon some time and looking into the people who came before you. You might just be surprised at how interesting and exciting their stories are - and how their stories helped lead to creating the story you're living today.