After my hospitalization I was starting to feel less fatigued. Something that came up regularly during discussions with doctors was my family history as it related to medical issues.
We didn’t have much that I was aware of, but in a different way I had always been fascinated by family history. I’d done genealogical research on and off through the years.
It began simply enough when I was in grade school with parents and grandparents. I mostly knew them. I never knew my mother’s father and only learned years later after his death that he had lived not too far from us my entire life, but was never a part of our life. He and my grandmother divorced and that was about all I knew.
Through the years I added to it talking to relatives and then by looking up obituaries on microfiche at a local library. The internet came in handy and I made good strides in some areas and little progress in others.
My father’s mother, and my mother’s father’s families were all Slavic. My mother’s grandfather arrived in 1911 and his wife was born here and that is all I know of her. My father’s grandmother was not born here and little information on her family exists. Her husband was born in PA and it is unknown where his father was born. It is very likely that they all arrived between 1880 and 1911. This was during the largest immigration period from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to the United States.
Considering how wide a range of current countries were once a part of this Empire and given the two world wars and use of different alphabets, finding records has been challenging.
On the other hand, my father’s father’s side were English and German and my mother’s mother’s side were all German. These records are much better documented and as a result I have been able to track several lines back to the 1400’s.
I always find the tracking of geography to be interesting. Most of the Germans in my family were from southwestern Germany, the Palatinate Region and arrived in the 2nd major wave from 1730 to 1750. These groups traveled up the Rhine river to Rotterdam and then took a ship to Philadelphia where they sought land to farm.
I still don’t know too much about most of my ancestors. What I do know is more general information about where they came from and where they went and from a macro perspective why.
It is really not that different from medicine. We know how to generally treat people and a portion of them will respond positively, but we don’t know on a personal level how to treat them.
At the same time, there are some genetic things we can learn, if we know enough of the family history. Even with it, this isn’t easy. My daughter was born with a cleft-lip and palate. In some instances this is genetic, but not always. There was one relative on my wife’s side of the family who had one previously. This didn’t seem too conclusive, but after our daughter was born there was another child in that same line that had one, which makes a much stronger case for it having been genetic.
Question for You?
Do you know much about your family history in general or medically? Any interesting stories you learned doing research? I’ve found quite a few.
Lesson Learned
Family history has more to do with us then we realize. Not only are we shaped by the experience and stories passed down to us, but even in their absence our genetics are a direct result of generations of pairings for a variety of reasons and under differing circumstances.
Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker 