Heirlooms for Everyone!

Not every family has expensive family heirlooms, valuable jewels, china, and silverware to hand out to all of Gramp's and Granny's offspring when they go, but there's probably something that means a lot to each one. It's the simple things that a grandchild will remember - like the cookie jar or the banana pudding bowl. Hopefully the recipe for the pudding has already been handed down. Maybe Gramps was a carpenter and his old hand tools would be priceless to a grandson who is also a carpenter. Maybe one of his grandsons was his special fishing buddy and his old rod and reel would look awesome hanging on the wall at the camp. 

There might be some special things like the sewing machine that your mom taught you to sew on or the buffet that still has the ice tea glass circle stains on the top. It may look like an old outdated worn out piece of furniture to some, but others will fight over it.

Perhaps you have an old handmade quilt that Granny made that is warm and heavy. It may have been used on the bed at night, on the floor during the day for the babies to play on, or on the back seat of the car for protection from those vinyl seats that got so hot in the summertime. Even if it's seen its better days and no longer usable, it can be cut into smaller pieces and framed or made into pillows and given to several family members. They call that a "cutter" quilt. We used the quilt shown below all the time, but it was still in great shape.

Sometimes kids will fight over the simplest things. See this meat fork? My sister and I both wanted it. I had my eyes on other things so I told her she could have it - and she took it. Then she brought it back. So I took it. Mom turned over so many pork chops with this fork, and fried chicken, and round steaks. As you can see it's a little burnt from where the flame of the gas stove licked at it. The fork should have probably stayed with the cast iron pots she cooked all that deliciousness in. But for now, I have the fork, but not the pots.

Here's something else that got fussed over. A silly plastic Woody Woodpecker cup! Mom had ordered two of them for my brother and me from the back of a cereal box when we were kids. After we outgrew them, one of them (his) ended up being used to scoop birdseed for years and years, and most of the paint had worn off. My brother mentioned that he wanted it, but then I found the other one up in the top kitchen cabinet in almost like new condition and I teased him with it. I told him he could have the beat up one. But I put the good one in the box for him since he lives out of town and didn't get to pick and choose the good stuff like us girls did. Well, neither of us ended up with it because someone broke in the storeroom and took the box it was in. (Remind me to tell you what else got stolen.)

Did Granny have a set of coffee cups and saucers? Maybe cream and sugar bowls?

If so, several of the grand daughters or daughter-in-laws will want one. 

We spent just about every Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house in Hosston, Louisiana because my grandmother's birthday was that week. All my aunts and uncles and cousins were there. We lived five hours away so we didn't get to see them very often. That was before interstate highways. Two lanes... all. the. way. Did Granny have a turkey platter or other special serving dishes that only came out for holidays? A salad bowl? A serving tray? It doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to bring back memories.

Perhaps there was a key to the old family home.
My dad kept this skeleton key to our old house hanging on the
key rack in our new house even though it was no longer needed.
I brought it home and framed it. 

Mom had plenty of souvenirs and knick knacks - some probably came from her mom. There's so many of them that if I ever have them (grandkids) there will be enough to trickle down to my great great great greats.... but I doubt they'll know who I was or where all this stuff came from. So I'll enjoy them and the memories while I still can. 

Did you or one of the grandchildren give a gift that can be returned to them when Granny passes away? I bought this beautiful emerald green decanter set for my mom when I was eight years old. Our neighbors, the Simons, took me Christmas shopping one year and when I saw this I just had to get it. It cost a whopping $6.99 at Gibson's back in 1964. When mom got older she would always say "If you see anything you want in there (the china cabinet) you can have it." Her china cabinet had become so cluttered with other things that at some point I decided it was time for me to take this beauty back. Made in Italy!

Did your Granny love flowers like mine did? Grandma had all kinds of blooming things. I'm not 100% positive this Calla Lily came from her yard, but that's where I think it came from. It sure was pretty last spring. Yes, plants can be heirlooms, too. Why not?

This is my grandma, Bessie Sessum, showing off some of her flowers by the back door. 

She was always happy to dig some up for anyone who wanted. 

Those portraits of Granny's parents, people you never knew, hanging in the hallway.... they may look old and faded, but someday you'll wish you knew what happened to those old pictures. I've tried tracking down photos of my grandfather's parents that probably hung in the bedroom of my grandparents' home. I remember those old oval frames with the bubbled glass, but I didn't know who those old people were. Now that I've been doing genealogy for 40+ years these are the only two great grandparents that I don't have pictures of and I don't know what they looked like. In the past few years I've looked up obituaries and addresses to find the children of cousins in other states that I've never met hoping that someone has those photos. With all the genealogy websites nowadays, I'm hoping that someday they'll turn up. I don't have to have the original. A digital copy will do just fine. Email it to me if you have them. Meanwhile, my dear sister bought me this heirloom portrait last Christmas. We don't know who this woman is, but we call her Aunt Bea.

Speaking of digital photos.... no need to fight over that box of old pictures and important documents anymore. Get someone to scan them all and give a digital copy to everyone. I've got most of ours scanned. Just trying to figure out how to label and organize before I copy them.

And now for the Granddaddy of our family heirlooms! My dad bought this gorgeous punch bowl set for Mom during their honeymoon in New Orleans, LA in 1946. I didn't know that until I found her old diary that dated back to the day she finished high school and went about a year and a half until she had been married for almost a year. Her description of the punch bowl according to her diary was "Boy - it's a honey!" We used it on many occasions. It's huge! I had no place for it and my sister has one of her own so we packed it up for our brother. Remember the boxes that got stolen? Yes, the punch bowl was in one of them :-(

We were crushed. Sad. Mad. Furious. We cried over it. We prayed about it. We called the cops. We called the pawn shops. We checked Ebay. We searched around the neighborhood thinking that maybe the boxes would be in someone's trash. We had our suspects. But it was gone. The family bible was in one of those boxes, too, along with the quilt pictured earlier in this post. Our grandmother made that quilt by hand.

But before I start ranting about why can't people just leave other people's stuff alone?....  We found the punch bowl. Four years later! It was a miracle, I tell you! It was meant to come home. My brother and his wife were here visiting for the weekend and decided to stop at a flea market in a small town not too far away. They could have stopped at any other flea market, but they chose that one. My sister and her husband were with them. It was a huge shop and they all went different directions looking at different things. My sister spotted it and went to get the others. It had a $250 price tag on it. They told the shop owner that we had a punch bowl just like it that had been stolen. He told them who he bought it from. The woman lived a block from my parents' house. He said if we could prove it was ours, we could have it back. It took about a week, but we rounded up some picture of the punch bowl in use like the one above and he gave it back to us - no charge. Happy ending!

What I'm trying to say about heirlooms is that there is plenty of stuff to go around even if your ancestors aren't rich. You may have to pull straws sometimes if you can't agree on who gets what, (like the meat fork) but the loser should get to pick next. If your granny has something you want, tell her. She may give it to you now, she might put it in her will, or she just might write you name on it for later. It's probably not the value that matters to you anyway.... it's the memories.

Laurentine Guidry

This photo is very special to me. It's one of only two pictures I have of me with my grandmother. I don't remember her very well. She died before I was two years old. In the photo I'm the baby on the right. The other baby is my cousin, Carl, who was born the day before me. The other children are my sister, Linda, on the left, then my cousin Jimmy, and on the right is my cousin, Barbara. We called her Maw Maw Guidroz.

Laurentine Angele' Guidry was my father's mother. She was the daughter of Alcide Guidry and Ida Prejean Guidry. She was born in Carencro, Lafayette Parish, Louisiana on March 13, 1901. 

She was one of ten siblings, eight boys and two girls. Her oldest sibling was a half brother, Arista Guidry. Her full siblings were Claude, Regis, Viateur, Josephine, Sidney, Artistille, David, and Rhule Guidry. The two girls, Josephine and Laurentine, were named after their grandfather, Joseph Laurent Prejean. 

Laurentine was bilingual - French and English - and could also read and write in both languages. She was educated at the catholic school in Carencro.

She married James Joseph Guidroz on December 20, 1920 at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Carencro. They were the parents of three sons - Ned, Albert, and Allen Guidroz.

Laurentine Guidry Guidroz, Linda Guidroz, Jeanelle Guidroz - I'm the baby.

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The date of birth is incorrect on this prayer card, the death certificate, and her headstone. She was born on March 13, 1901, not 1902. The proof is on her baptismal certificate below. If you run across different names or dates for the same person or event in your research use common sense when deciding which is correct. This baptismal certificate was issued in 1901 with her mother giving the information. The death certificate and headstone information was given by her children 57 years later. Which one would you trust?

She is buried in the cemetery at  St. Peter's Catholic Church in Carencro, LA.

If you are related to Laurentine or any of her siblings, please leave a comment below and let me know how you are related. 

Should I Do a DNA test? What will a DNA test tell me?

Yes, do a DNA test. Which one? At this time I have to suggest AncestryDNA. There are several others and they are all a little different and have different tools you can play with, but right now  Ancestry has the largest database so you'll have a better chance of finding matches if that's what you're looking for. Ancestry advertises mainly to find your ethnicity, but there is so much more to learn from a DNA test.

The following information and images are from my own AncestryDNA test.

On the left in Figure 1 are my ethnicity estimates. It shows that I'm 55% Europe West (France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein). I'm also 16% Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). When I click on the green button at the bottom of that section (Discover Your DNA Story) it opens up more regions as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1

In figure 2 below you can see that my Ireland/Scotland/Wales roots make up about 10% of my DNA and Great Britain is 7%. If I click the plus sign next to Low Confidence Regions it shows 4% Scandinavian (Finland, Sweden, Denmark) and 4% Europe South (Greece, Italy, and Albania). There were also some other areas at 1% or less which is not enough to get excited about. They are all estimates. Nothing is exact. My sister and I have nowhere near the same numbers in our charts. We did not inherit exactly the same DNA from our parents. It's very random, but there's still enough of the same DNA that we know we share the same two parents.

Figure 2

Also on this page is a color coded map that shows the areas that corresponds with the areas on the list above. Starting on the European side of the ocean - those are where my ancestors were located thousands of years ago. The areas of North America that are red and gold colored are more recent, in the past two to three hundred years. The gold colored areas show the Acadian migration from the eastern areas of southern Canada to southern Louisiana. You can't see it that well on this map because the red over powers it, but that gold color is under the red in a small concentrated area of southern Louisiana. This area is sometimes referred to as Acadiana and the people are affectionately called Cajuns. We don't mind at all. In fact, we are proud that our ancestors survived what they went through to get here. The red area is the southern migration of settlers from Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales from the east coast toward the west as the country expanded and land grants were issued. 

Figure 3

The middle section of my DNA results (Figure 1) shows Shared Ancestor Hints - that is how many people I match and share hints with. A hint means that we have common ancestors and Ancestry can tell who they are because of the data we have entered into each of our family trees. Our trees match somewhere and our DNA also matches.

Figure 4 below is what I see if I click on one of my matches that I share hints with. At the top level it shows our common ancestor(s) then each generation after until it gets to my match and me. In this case my match and I are 3rd cousins. It shows that at the bottom of the last person on the right. It also shows my relationship to each person on her side. 

Let me back  up a minute to explain the relationships shown here. Joseph and Euphrasie are the parents of Belzida and Pierre who are siblings. Siblings are on the same level across from each other. The next level down are the children of the siblings and they are first cousins to each other, and the next level are second cousins, and so on. It's when you compare people on different levels that you get the 1st cousin twice removed or second cousin once removed that confuses so many people. When you see it visually like this it's easier to understand. If you're not on the same level - you are removed.

Figure 4

The starred matches from Figure 1 are ones that I have marked myself. I usually mark someone either because I know how we are related or because I see something interesting in their tree that I want to investigate. I also write them down in my notebook with a note about what was so interesting about their tree.

DNA Circles in the last column of Figure 1 are connections to people who all match other people in the circle, but don't necessarily match everyone else. At this time I have 46 Circles. This is just one of them.

Figure 5

This circle shows my father's group at the top (my sister and me) and each other person in the circle that we are related to. If you look closely there are some light gray lines connecting each person in the circle to those they match. In this case most groups within the circle match each other. This is a case of endogamy - the custom of marrying only within the limits of a local community, clan, or tribe, i.e. Cajuns. The reason some do not match may be that one or the other did not complete their tree far enough back to catch the connection. 

This next slide is a snapshot of my sisters relationship to me which I got from her list of matches. The predicted relationship is "Immediate Family". That means we are full siblings. In the case of a half sibling the predicted relationship would show "Close Family to 1st Cousin" because they share less DNA than full siblings. 

Figure 6

The feature I really like here is somewhat hidden and you have to know about it to notice it, but that little "i" in the circle above the black square is what I'm talking about. The square does not appear  until you click on the "i." This shows how many centimorgans (cMs) you share and on how many DNA segments. The short definition of a centimorgan is a unit for measuring genetic linkage. The higher that number the more closely related you are. My sister and I share 2,859 cMs across 48 DNA segments while my mother and I share 3,478 cMs across 47 segments. I share more with my mother because half of my DNA comes from her. My sister also got half of her DNA from Mom, but not exactly the same parts that I got. It's random. We have a first cousin who has tested and she shares 1,514 cMs with our mom who is her aunt, but only around 800 cMs with my sister and me. 

This is a lot of information to absorb, but once you have received your DNA results you will already know what to expect to find. But to get your results you first have to submit the test. Don't put it off because you're not sure if you should do it. If you've read down this far then you are curious about it and you should do it! And while you're at it - test your parents and grandparents if they are still living. They will be more closely related to some people than you are because they have more of the DNA from their ancestors than you got from them.

See ya'll on the match list!

Carved in Stone

When you're looking for information on your ancestors you will  find it in many places. Most of us have been to cemeteries and noticed that the headstones usually have a name, date of birth and date of death. You may think that everything on the headstone is correct, but that is not always the case. 

This is my great grandmother's headstone. The first thing you notice is her name. You might think that her maiden name was Mitchell or maybe that was her middle name. In fact, her full maiden name was Nevada Nebraska COURTNEY. Mitchell was the last name of her first husband, Charlie Marshall MITCHELL. He was the father of my grandmother. Nevada's second husband was John HUMPHRIES. It seems odd to me that both married names were included on the headstone, but because some of her children were Mitchells and some were Humphries, they decided to include both so no one's feelings would be hurt. 

Then I found her listed on the 1880 US census. It was dated June 15, 1880. Notice the daughter in this family named "Infant" who is 6/12 of age born in December? That means this child was six months old. That's her! That's Nevada! So she was actually born in December of 1879, not 1880 as carved in stone. There were no birth certificates back then so the best record in this case is the census. Unless she had a sister that died as a child I'm going with my gut and saying Infant = Nevada.

James COURTNEY and Lavonia HAWKINS were my great great grandparents and I assume Infant was my great grandmother, Nevada.

To explain a little about what's going on in this census record, this was a blended family - some yours, mine, and ours children. Both the husband and wife had been married before and had children with other spouses, and then had children together. The first column has the individuals' names. The next column is for Race. W = White. The next column is for Gender. M = Male, F = Female. Next is age. Jas (abbreviation for James) is 49, Lavonia is 30. The last column shown here shows the relationship to the head of household. In this case James is the head of household and Lavonia is his wife. The three oldest children were for James, but not Lavonia. They were too old to be hers. The next three children are for both James and Lavonia. The last two children are Lavonia's from a previous marriage. Notice that they have a different last name (McMahan) and in the relationship column is states they are step-daughters to the head of household and they are in between the ages of the oldest three and youngest three children. 

This is one of the most confusing families that I've come across in my tree, but it finally all made sense when I realized what was going on. Look at it until it makes sense to you. You may come across some even more confusing than this in your search. There is a lot more information on the census form than this clipping shows that I will explain in more details on a future post. 

If you have any questions about this post or if you have or need more information about the family shown here please contact me at cajungenealogist@gmail.com.

Where Can I Find My Dead Relatives?

The obvious answer to that question would be "at the cemetery" and that's a good place to find information. If you know where your grandparents are buried, go there and take photos of their graves. Look at the graves nearby for extended family. Often times other family members are buried all together in a family plot. 

Warning: The dates of birth and death carved in the headstones are not necessarily correct, but they should be close enough that you can use them as a starting point when you start looking up other records. Two of my great grandparents and one of my grandmothers have a wrong date on their headstones. The ones shown above for my maternal SESSUM grandparents are correct as far as I know. The death dates are correct because I remember when they died and I have certified copies of their death certificates. However, I have not found birth records for either of them, but I know we always celebrated their birthdays on those dates, and the birth years seem okay if the census records closest to their births listed the correct ages. 

One of the best places to start looking for information about your ancestors is by interviewing living relatives, especially the older ones. My first interview was with Vivian, a first cousin of my grandmother - my dad's mother. Vivian was the oldest living person I could find that new my grandmother's family from way back. And as luck would have it, she was also the first cousin of my husband's great grandmother. And yes, my grandmother and his great grandmother were also cousins. That happens a lot in south Louisiana. This is considered an endogamous area, where so many people are descended from a small number of families. All three of these ladies were descended from the PREJEAN family.

You can also find information on your deceased relatives in libraries, state archives, churches, courthouses, boxes of photos and memorabilia, and websites such as Ancestry.com, Family Search, Find A Grave, Google, and many others. 

Some local, state, and university libraries have Genealogy sections with some of the local records. You can also use their computers to access many genealogy databases for free. The public library in  downtown Lafayette, LA has a great genealogy section and at this time they have a group of volunteers from the Lafayette Genealogical Society that will help you with  your search on Tuesday mornings. The University of Lousiana - Lafayette library has archives located on the third floor.

Most state websites include a link to Vital Records. Some have those indexed (not the actual record, but a list of people and dates) and some require you to order copies for a fee. You can usually get copies of death records that are over fifty years old - no questions asked. If you want one less than fifty years old you may have to prove that you are a close relative to obtain it. 

Click here for Louisiana Vital Records. 

Catholic churches have really old records, but they may not let the public access the actual files. Most will be happy to provide you with a copy or at least names and dates.

Courthouses will have legal documents like marriage records, wills, land deeds, and some also have birth and death records.

And don't count out Facebook to find your living relatives. I have searched by last name only and found many relatives. You'd be surprised at all the information they post there. Birthdays, spouses names, anniversaries, children's names, in-laws, and place of work. 

How to Start Building Your Family Tree

You went to a family reunion last weekend and had a great time with your cousins. Everybody had lipstick prints on their cheeks from all the aunts kissing them. There were some relatives there that you had heard of, but never met. You introduced yourself to a long lost cousin and spent the next hour and a half talking about relatives that had passed away or lived far away. You found out that your great grandmother was married twice. And she was pregnant before she got married the first time... and she was only fifteen. Two of your uncles married sisters. You counted up all your first cousins and there were twenty nine, counting you and your siblings. Most of them lived near the small town where your mom grew up, but you grew up five hours away and didn't know them all. Your older cousins had kids your age. You noticed that all of your aunts had beautiful silver hair and your uncles were all bald. 

Now you wish you had written down the names of some of the people your cousins reminisced about. They were your relatives, after all. You remember some of their names, but what was Aunt Rita's daughter's name? Was it Donna or Debbie? It started with a D. She was about the same age as you and you vaguely remember playing with her when you visited Aunt Hazel in Baton Rouge when you were about four years old. You think your mom might have an old picture of you and Donna/Debbie. You call your mom to find out if she knows where the picture is. She doesn't know so you go over to her house to search for it. She tells you there are two boxes of photos on the top shelf in the closet in the back bedroom. 

And now all of a sudden you are doing family research. It starts just like that! But before you look for that photo, you'd better get yourself a notebook and a pencil because you'll have lots of questions for Mom about all of the people in all of those photos. You might as well go ahead and write their names on the back if they aren't already there. 

Nevada Courtney Mitchell Humphries - my great grandmother
Bessie Mitchell Sessum - my grandmother
Effie Sessum Pennington - my great great aunt

On the first page of your notebook write the current date. In about forty years you'll be glad you did that. I think I started my research in 1976. I know it was after I got married and before I had my first son. There's a three year span there. Write down your grandparents' names on the first page, both sets. Your dad's parents are your paternal grandparents and your mom's parents are your maternal grandparents. You might as well start learning the lingo! On the next page write all of your dad's siblings and their spouses. You can also go ahead and write their children's names while you're at it. You probably know most of them. They are your first cousins. Do the same on the next page for your mom's siblings and their children. If you know their full name write it down. If you know their birth date write that down, too.

And that's how you start building your family tree! No need to rush. Start with your close family. Soon it will become a hobby and you'll want to enjoy it for a long time to come. Don't consider it a project because a project is something you'll want to finish. You can't ever finish a family tree. You can take a break from it. You can put it off. You can quit working on it. You can get sidetracked by other things. But when you're ready, there are always more family member to find. I promise!