A Family Tale

The How and Why of Doing my Family History

This is a description of why, and how I have gone about
putting together this Family History.
It is a personal note, with some parts others may care about.

Dwyne Rhodes Patrick, Lawton Oklahoma, March, 1997

Like others, I can date my interest in genealogy to a specific time and event. In my case, it was the birth of my daughter Darcy Rae. I passed on to her a family tradition: the DR initials, which I shared with my father. I began to wonder about other family traditions, and soon enough family history. As I watched her grow, I wanted her to have the knowledge of who her ancestors were, knowledge I had very little of from my parents. My father, who died when I was 16, had been filled with tales of his ancestors, but like most Irish stories they seemed to be equal parts myth and exaggeration, with only small grains of truth.

As I have researched our family I have found these small grains, hidden in the stories and now know how much myth I was told. Perhaps more digging about will find more grains of truth, but I will give Darcy more facts than fancy (and a few of the family tall tales as good Irish blarney should be preserved!).

Like others I set an initial goal. I am not all the way to where I want to be, but each year I get closer. My goal has been to follow each branch of Darcy's ancestry until I run it "off shore" to Europe or elsewhere. As I started, I discovered a wealth of materials from earlier genealogists working on my or closely related family lines. While much of this was "gold standard" material and moved me forward quickly, it was just as often like those stories of my father's, myth and stories wrapped around a small grain of real truth. Winnowing this kind of material requires patience and extra research!

Wendy's family had documented all but two of their branches back to the ships which brought her German ancestors and their five generations of German Lutheran family to western Michigan. I was half-way to my goal with my first look. Second and third sets of material fell into place soon after, work on the Massingail family took it and the allied Falkenbery name to England and Ireland. But the family history for the Bendure name was "stuck" in post-revolutionary western Virginia, where despite many hours in the library, it remains today. I went on with work on other family lines, moving several further back than I found them, but for several years, not getting any closer to the first ships of my family.

Then I began to communicate on the net with others looking for information on their families. In the past two years I have made progress on several family lines, thanks to information provided by others looking at their families. The consolidation of many diverse lines of family history has become the central mechanism by which I have progressed. Some lines have now been take off shore: Dutton, Pryer and Patrick itself!. Others remain elusive, like Lovica, Weeks, Lovett and Potter. Still others, stubbornly stalled like Bendure or moving in single generations like Koll and Goeser. I am convinced that the internet and genealogy are ideally suited to each other; any genealogist who does not work on the net is limiting their ability and reach.

All the ancestral information I have accumulated on these
families can be found in the Gedcom file available at this link:


Our Family in a GEDCOM File

I am still working on this Irish/Scottish/English/German Family tree, so please stay tuned or drop me a line!

© 1997 dwynep@rocketmail.com

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page