A genealogy blog? Why?!

It’s a good question. There are thousands of genealogy blogs out there, maybe even tens of thousands. Does the world need another one? Does it need mine? “What’s the point of it?” was my son’s question. I asked myself an even better one. “Who’s going to read it?” The fact is, I’m only related to about six living people. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but at my wedding my entire family sat at one table for ten and we threw in three family friends and our officiant. So, really, who is going to read it?

But the thing is, I’m a regular listener of Drew Smith and George Morgan’s Genealogy Guys podcast. (And if you’re not, you really should be.) The podcast is a wealth of genealogical information, and Drew and George are very pro-blogging. Everyone, they argue, should be blogging, getting those names out there, sharing those stories, casting bait for cousins. I would listen to an episode, decide to finally start that blog, then spend a week talking myself out of it. Rinse and repeat, for more than a year.

The person who broke that cycle was Sarah Connor. No, not the one from Terminator, although I confess I get a nerdy tingle whenever I see her name in my tree!

Sarah was born in Philadelphia in 1845. She married Edwin Enoch in 1868. She gave birth to at least seven children. And in 1883, shortly after her firstborn son was struck by a train and killed, she was committed to the Norristown State Hospital for the Insane. I don’t know what her diagnosis was. I do know she spent the next 45 years there, until her death in 1928.

In 1900, husband Edwin was living with a second wife, although so far no divorce or marriage records have been found. When daughter Clara married in 1905 she indicated on her marriage application that her mother was deceased, although she was in fact very much alive and would live another 23 years. When Sarah died the information on her death certificate came from her Norristown files. Despite her having at least three surviving children, no one came forward to act as informant.

As I dug deeper into her life, I couldn’t get Sarah out of my mind. Did anyone ever visit her? Did her children even know she was still alive?

Sarah’s not the only woman in my family tree to have been “put away” in an asylum in the 19th Century. I’m pretty sure we all have them in our families. At the time, institutionalization was a disturbingly common way to dispose of women who didn’t conform to the narrow definitions of acceptable behavior. And the women targeted had almost no rights or recourse. They were at the mercy of a system they weren’t allowed to participate in. One that only valued them in very specific contexts.

Sarah reminded me that none of our ancestors lived in a vacuum. They defined and were defined by the times they lived in. Their stories are personal but they’re also universal. And they deserve to be shared and read, and maybe even inspire others to tell the stories of their ancestors.

I love history; I think we all do. Part of the reason we’re drawn to genealogy is the way it helps us personalize the past. So I’m going to stop worrying about who might read this blog and just dive in. I’ll share things, learn things, hopefully become a better writer. And maybe I’ll even catch some cousins!