Scott Dickson's Blog

I caught the genealogy bug nearly 20 years ago. Not a typical thing for a single guy in his (then) twenties. Now married, my wife tolerates but does not share my obsession. Shame, since she has some really potentially interesting family lines to research.

The thing about searching for your family tree is that you never know quite what you might find! I saw a great blog entry today on The Genealogue that I had to share.  It quotes an article in the Saturday Times about one such search:

Maurice Kellner, a county officer for Genuki, the genealogical body for the UK and Ireland, reports how he helped a woman in Tasmania seeking facts about her family connection to the village of Wappenham, near Towcester. He found that one of her ancestors had been sentenced to be transported to Australia for committing unnatural acts with a cow. “I’m not sure if she was grateful or not because she never contacted me back,” he says. [Link]

I may have some characters in my background, but that's not something I've yet found!

I'm from the South. People in the south often have a different sort of appreciation for the American Civil War than those in the rest of the country. Like so many others here, I had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. By my count, 1 lineal ancestor on Dad's side, 6 or 7 on Mom's side, and literally dozens of collateral ancestors.

I've been thinking about joining the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It's a lineage society ostensibly devoted to honoring our Confederate ancestors. Trouble is that sometimes it strays over into some pretty unacceptable areas. From what I have read, there has been a bit of a take-over in some parts by racial extremists. I really want nothing to do with that and find it really appalling.

But, I am torn still. I think going through the application process would help me get my research cleaned up. But, do I really want to join?

It's that old question of whether a few bad apples in a group can spoil the whole bunch. Lots of people think the same thing about church, but I would never consider not being active there. Is that a double standard? I just don't know.....

This week is the annual meeting of the Hudson Family Association. The HFA is a genealogical society that researches Hudson and Hutson families in the US, primarily focusing on the South. We get together every year for a couple of days. The annual meeting consists of workshops on genealogical techniques and resources, research opportunities, a banquet, and just getting to see folks. Our meeting this year is in sunny Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of The King, Elvis Presley. I have heard that perhaps Elvis might even grace us with his presence this year!

One of the big topics this year is the Hudson DNA project. The HFA has been encouraging direct male Hudson members, particularly in key family lines, to have their DNA tested and recorded. In this way, we have been able to both verify relationships exist and to verify that supposed relationships do not exist, that presumed brothers are in fact not related. Pretty exciting results.

Now, if only I could connect my Hudson family into *any* of the lines that the HFA researches......

My grandparents, Robert & Susan Dickson, will celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary this week. So far as I can tell, they are just as in love now as they were in this picture, taken in 1940. I am so happy to be able to share in their special day. Family and friends will gather for an open house and reception after church on Sunday to wish them well. I look forward to the day when my wife and I can look back on our long years of marriage. Everybody has ups and downs. Grandmother & Granddad have no doubt had good times and bad, good health and poor, great happiness and great sadness. Besides the joys of marriage, birth of children, and all the other happy moments, over the years, they have buried their parents, eleven brothers and sisters between them, and a son. But they have always remained steadfast in their love for each other and their love for their family. They have remained active in their church for all of these years, too. I am proud beyond words to be their grandson.

Here's a new topic. I am fascinated by genealogy. I have been tracking my family's history since about 1989 and have had a mix of huge success and huge frustration. I grew up hearing my grandparents tell stories about their families. And there have always been some important family heirlooms around - nothing that has any particular value, just that carries along a family story. Eventually, I got the bug and wanted to find out more about my family. I was born in Tennessee and both of my parents and their families were from Arkansas. Many people in the US trace their family to an immigrant within a few generations. Here in the south though, many of our families arrived in Virginia and South Carolina and made their way across the south in search of land and prosperity. Such was the case for my family. I've not found any immigrants more recent than 1785. So, what do I want to find out with this endless family search? From the standpoint of filling out a pedigree, my first two goals are to find all of my ancestors for eight generations and then to find the immigrant on each limb of the tree. Turns out that eight generations fits nicely on a pedigree chart. I'm doing much better with some families than with others. The frustrating thing is that of all of my family lines, the Dicksons are the ones that I know the least about. I found my great-great-grandfather in the 1880 census on my very first trip to the archives 15 years ago and have never found anything more about this family that I can feel certain about. It's about so much more than filling out a pedigree chart, though. For me, knowing about the *people* that came before me, what they did, where they lived, what sort of people they were, what they stood for helps me to know more about myself. And it gives me a lot more excuse to get to know my own living family better. I've been blessed with an amazing family. No one famous or illustrious, but folks who have lived interesting lives nonetheless - farmers, preachers, teachers. I think I might post a little bit about some of these folks from time to time. I've also been blessed to be the keeper of so much of the family _stuff_ and for that I am immensely thankful. Photos, quilts, Bibles, clocks, watches, swords, each with its own story and memory of someone that came before me. Some folks have no interest or curiousity about where they came from. For me, it helps me figure out who I am. Like Tom Joad said in _The Grapes of Wrath_, "If we don't remember our past, how will we know who we are?"