My friend John is a genealogy nut. I say this not to insult him but simply because it’s true. He once spent untold hours (days? months?) in the Ellsworth American archives reading every issue ever published and cataloguing every mention of a member of his family. That’s 52 issues every year since 1851. You do the math.
This is my great-great grandfather, Henry Dearborn Hunt. The picture is from “The History of Genesee County, Michigan,” published in 1879.
John has pretty much run out of things to research about his own ancestors and has turned his attention to the families of friends and neighbors. (He’s currently investigating a theory that a neighbor’s distant ancestor fraudulently altered the date of her marriage in order to claim a pension intended for widows of Revolutionary War veterans.) So when I showed him some vague notes I had about my own family tree he immediately opened a file on my family and logged onto Google Search. The first thing he came up with was this picture:
This is my great-great grandfather, Henry Dearborn Hunt. The picture is from “The History of Genesee County, Michigan,” published in 1879. When I showed this to my sister she said, “He looks just like Ray [our brother].”
Ray Hunt
You be the judge:
That’s what got me started on the quest to find out more about my family origins. There’s something mysteriously compelling about this clear evidence of a genetic link to an earlier generation. My family members are amused but also interested – no doubt they’ll soon start telling people I’m a genealogy nut. (See above re: my friend John. His wife already accuses him of taking me to the Dark Side.)
This blog is a record of my search and some of the stories I’m finding along the way.