Who doesn’t love a good treasure hunt?!  Digging up something that’s been buried for decades, or even hundreds of years!!  Those who know me, know that I LOVE working on my family tree…  I’m addicted!!  It’s like searching for buried treasure!!  You’ll often find me on ancestry.com, touring cemeteries, photographing tombstones, reading about DNA, and attending genealogical seminars!  Weird, I know!!  There are worse things… 🙂

It started one day when I was flipping channels on tv and the show “Who Do You Think You Are” came on.  They were featuring Reba McEntire’s ancestry and it led her to stand on the spot in England where her ancestor was buried.  Oh my gosh…I totally cried…sobbed! It was just so touching!!

I showed the episode to my Mom and together we decided to do a free week on ancestry.com to see what we’d come up with.  It took only a few minutes, and we found the passenger record for my Great Grandmother, Olga, who came over to America from Finland when she was just a teenager.  Seeing that document was all it took. We were hooked.  Since then, she has been working on her side of the family tree, while I have been working on my Dad’s.  We make a great team!

We’ve found lots of “treasure” too! One ancestor is mentioned in a book about pioneers in Napa.  I met the author and she gave me a tour of where he lived!  My great grandfather owned a circus and was a slack rope walker!!  Another ancestor was well-known in Finland because he made a great deal of money selling his salt (which at the time was more costly than gold). We like to call him “The Salt King” because he even had his own soldiers!!  I knew we were royalty!! 😉

Then there are those ancestors who overcame such hardships and actually survived.  They are the true “treasures” in our tree.   I say to myself sometimes, “If my great, great Grandmother Wilhelmina, who lost several babies,  could then survive her teenage son dying of smallpox…then I can get through this!”   Those are the ones who leave true legacies behind… because of their suffering and incredible loss,  we today are encouraged to press on when times are tough.  In finding their stories, I often say under my breath, “You are not forgotten.  Not by me.”  I even left one ancestor’s favorite cookies on his gravesite, along with some flowers.  I know the birds ate the cookies…I’m not a crazy person…but I figured if there is a “great cloud of witnesses” in Heaven looking down on me, maybe he saw that and was touched by it (or he thought, “is that weirdo really related to me?”)  Oh yes I am…enjoy you’re cookies!! 🙂  Either way, that was a new one for me!

Lately, I’ve been working on an Ireland mystery involving my ancestors land being stolen while they were in New York.  It’s a strange story, and I’m hitting many “ancestry walls”…but I’m determined to find the truth.  I’m also trying to find my branch that came over from England…I thought they would be the easy ones…maybe because those records would be the easiest ones to read…but I’m stuck there too. Anyway…

Searching for treasure…and loving it!! 🙂

“I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness…secret riches.  I will do this so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, the One who calls you by name.” Isaiah 45:3