Henrietta Hay's Column

I'm usually more interested in where I'm going than where I've been, but now and then I get jolted back into my past. I had an interesting journey this summer.

There are many advantages to being an only child. I got my parents' full attention and didn't have to share with a competitive big sister or a grubby little brother. But that means that now I am short on relatives of my generation. My parents left their home state of Illinois and moved as newlyweds to the wild west - well, Rocky Ford in 1909 wasn't exactly wild but I'm sure it seemed so to their parents. A few years later they moved to Englewood and as a result, I haven't seen much of the relatives I do have.

Thanks to Christmas cards and birthday cards I have kept in touch with my two remaining cousins but a couple of years ago the cards ceased. After a bit of searching and several phone calls I found that they are both in a nursing home in Illinois and unable to communicate. This summer, the young man who is an old family friend of theirs and their financial trustee called me to say that he and his family would be vacationing in western Colorado.

Over a lengthy dinner with them I renewed ties that have been long neglected, and found memories I had long thought gone. David, who is a park ranger in the Chicago area, brought me a big box of old family pictures and we spent the evening going through pictures of aunts and uncles and cousins and lots of complete strangers.

On top of the pile was a huge 2-foot wide oval picture of the old farmhouse where my dad grew up. Many years ago some one had taken a photograph, enlarged it on some sort of hard board, and artificially colored it by some obscure method or other. I can't imagine how old it is. It has a big tear in it and is not something I would hang in my house. My inclination was to pitch it, but my local friends threatened dire consequences if I did. "This is history," they said.

"History" is fine for a while, but I don't have time for much of it. On the other hand, what if - 100 years from now - some great-great-great grandchild finds those pictures valuable? Not likely -- but just in case!

Searching for my ancestors has never been a hobby of mine. I am inclined to agree with Helen Keller who wrote, "There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his." The closest I come is - so I was told once - eligibility to the Association of the Illegitimate Descendents of William the Conqueror, but I can't prove that one.

I have noticed that interest in ancestor searching tends to erupt in middle age, so I asked some of my boomer friends what is so fascinating about it. Most of all, they said, is curiosity -- the desire to know where we came from. What were they like, those people whom we thank for our lives? Were they kings or slaves, or somewhere in between? We want to know how we got to be who we are.

We enjoy the fun of the family stories we hear, stories which tend to grow over the years. My personal favorite is written in fading ink in a notebook which was my grandmother's. My many-times-great-grandparents were living in Danbury Connecticut during the Revolution. The men were away in the Continental Army "at the time when Arnold's army descended on them and burned the town." The Redcoats drew water from her well and drank from "dishes which grandmother furnished them." Grandmother at 80 was either very polite or very shrewd. My version is that she out-smarted them. When the Redcoats burned the church where provisions were stored, the grease from the pork ran down the ditch in front of her house, but her house was saved.

It was an interesting journey into the past, but now let's get back to today's business. I have a column to write.