Who Knew I'd Find a Sheriff on the Family Tree?

After years of thinking about it, I’ve finally started digging into family history, searching through old records, connecting the dots back from me to whomever I find somewhere back there. And, having started, I’m finding it hard to stop.

It’s like working a puzzle, trying to determine how to take bits of information that you’ve retained from family conversations, the names of relatives met briefly—and maybe only once--at weddings and funerals, and attach them to the family tree. But when you suddenly come upon a census record from the early 20th century that has a name you remember or a parent described as the 2-year-old child of your grandparents, there’s a thrill that runs up your spine. That’s my Daddy, that child whom I knew only as a grown man.

My Mother's Mother, Susie

My spine tingles at least once during each session I spend on Ancestry.com. I’ve found newspaper articles that mention “Mrs. George Artope.” She was returning to Cedartown after a visit with her sister, Mrs. Johnnie Bagwell (whom we knew as Aunt Lula Bagwell), in Atlanta. Now I’m feeling some confusion about this tidbit because Mrs. George Artope was my great-grandmother and Lula Artope Bagwell was her daughter. Maybe the newspaper got it wrong and it was my grandmother, Mrs.Raymond Artope, who was going back to Cedartown. Confusion about which Artope woman was meant, to find any female ancestor in an old newspaper gave me a charge.

By the way, these were not folks of high society by any means. But their visit was mentioned in the 1921 Atlanta Constitution just the same. It was a simpler time. That was long before Facebook was either possible technologically or conceivable intellectually. In those days, it seems, regular folks’ comings and goings in Georgia made the newspaper. The Atlanta paper included our family name in the “East Point News,” East Point being a suburb of Atlanta before being swallowed up by the sprawling city Atlanta became. [I’m struck by the dichotomy of my own mother saying to me in the late 1990s when my name appeared in the Dayton Daily News because of some TV scheduling issue: “In my day, nice women didn’t get their names in the paper, Lee.” Hmmph, Mama, I wish I’d known about Granny (or Great-Grandma) getting her name in the Constitution when you chastised me!

And then, there’s the sheriff. Yes, according to 1880 census records, my great-grandfather on Daddy’s side was a county sheriff at age 31. I’d always known that my father’s mother’s family was well-known in their South Georgia county. There’s even a crossroads there named for them. But, despite the fact that I knew Daddy’s grandfather had married three times (two of the wives were sisters) and sired ten children, I had never heard (or didn’t remember) that he had been the sheriff. By the time the 1900 census was taken, his occupation was listed as “farmer.”

My Mother's Father (right)

And there are the carpenters. I knew my mother’s father was a carpenter. He shared his love of woodworking with us when we were kids, taking us to his basement workshop and making little stools for us to sit on at a safe distance from his sawing and hammering. He made pieces of furniture for us that we still cherish.

What I didn’t know was that I would find carpenters back along the bloodline before him. In the 1880 census records from South Carolina, I found yet another carpenter in the family, this one my mother’s great-grandfather. There’s something in the genes, perhaps, although I’m sad to say that particular part of the genetic code didn’t make it to my generation.

What set me on this course of searching the family tree was sheer curiosity. I have no need to discover that I’m related to anyone famous or rich or royal. What is fascinating me as I explore each new limb on the tree is simply the idea that I’m touching the lives of those who have gone before me. Their experience of life is outlined in the records available, sometimes clearly and other times with more obscure references that leave me wondering and imagining how they lived.

I find myself wishing I had listened more attentively to my parents’ stories about family members. I wish I had asked more questions of parents and grandparents when they were alive. Unfortunately, even the curious among us don’t exhibit enough curiosity in childhood about the “old people.” I missed many chances at weddings and funerals and family reunions. Now I must rely on small snippets of memory to guide my way through the records so that I don’t follow the wrong trail. And I’ve already found that others who are researching available information are willing to share.

I actually have a fairly significant stack of old pictures, some of them tintypes, that were left in my care.  Unfortunately, even my mother didn't know who some of the people in the pictures were or why they had come into our keeping.  I find myself wanting to know their names and why their photographs are in my hands.

So I have begun my quest to know better those who came before me and to attempt to learn what I can about their lives. I imagine my father’s spirit somewhere out there, chuckling that his offspring finally has a deeper appreciation of history.

You were right again, Daddy. It is interesting to learn about the way we were and you were also right that I should have paid more attention to what you tried to tell me. I’m hooked now and determined to document what I learn for those who come after me. And, as you said, it’s fun, too.