Roots and branches

Virtual family tree engages children of all ages

By Lantz Powell

My brother and I are the self-appointed family historians. Recently he sent me to a website, Geni.com, and asked what I thought. The site is a basic family tree program, only a little different from others I had seen. It works in the “cloud” of the Internet; therefore, many family members can add information to it.
After I entered a few pictures and what I knew about our family, I wrote him back with my positive comments. By then he had started to follow one grandmother’s branch, pioneers in Texas. We contacted a Louisiana cousin, who at once started adding all her children and their cousins. Once that happened, we were hooked.
We passed the virtual family tree on to other cousins, who filled in antique photos of our common grandparents. Those cousins, in turn, passed it on to even more cousins and their parents, who quickly put in photos and information about their children and grandchildren.     Stories about ancestors were added. Brothers and sisters posted photos they had in boxes. Soon land grant papers showed up, and wills and old letters and information about family black sheep we all had forgotten.
For centuries, the study of genealogy was left to the elderly relative with a lot of time to trudge through census and land records. Today the world has Google, and the library has computerized census records, digital copies of genealogy books your aunt would never have been able to find. Suddenly genealogy is the third-largest hobby practiced by Americans.
Geni.com brings the hobby to another level. With it you can post those old photos and even videos of your family. You can copy letters you found in the attic and link to websites that give even more information. Once you get back as far as you can, put that ancestor in Google, and most likely you will find someone has already researched him or her. Then you can go even deeper into your history.
One of my children looked at it for a short time and suddenly stopped. “Dad, it never ends. Where do you stop?”
I guess that’s the problem: It never does. It is habit-forming. Each day we dig a little more. Not only are my children interested in what we have found, but now hundreds of cousins have become involved.
We have found that when our ancestors moved from North Carolina to Mississippi, they took a trail that came within a mile of our house in Chattanooga. A cousin fought in three Civil War battles, all within shouting distance of places we’ve lived. Another cousin was the first elected mayor of Birmingham, Ala. I discovered that the story my grandfather used to tell was true: We did have a relative who ran away and married an Indian—and the Indian was the mother of Chief Osceola.
At present, we have linked to over 1,500 direct relations. And because Geni links with Google Maps, we can easily see where everyone was born with pins on a map. Talk about history coming alive!
Cousins report that they are talking with their children more about their family stories. When they study the Civil War, they now look to see how many relatives fought in the war, and where. When one child studied the Irish famine, a cousin went to Geni and pulled up her great-grandfather’s name on a ship’s passenger list; it had been posted by another cousin we haven’t seen in years. Now my sons understand why members of one branch of the family ended up picking tomatoes in California in the 1930s.
In one town alone—Ranger, Texas—we found the importance of the Texas Rangers, drugstores, doctors, lawyers and teachers, oil and the railroad in our family history. A grandfather was there when the first oil well came in; his father-in-law owned the second oil well in the county. They both saw the town of Ranger grow from a few hundred to over 40,000 people. By the time our last family member there died, Ranger had fewer than 620 families and very little oil.
My brothers are scattered, but we call each other from time to time to keep in touch, and we try to visit for special occasions. Computers and e-mail have made us even closer because when we write one, we copy all. With Geni.com, however, a completely different dimension has opened up. We can send family e-mails, and the website notifies us when anyone in our tree has a birthday. We also are notified when a family member posts more photos or records or links to our history.

Our grandmother, who is 89, has found new value in her memories. Her children visit her more often with questions and tape recorders—and her grandchildren run home to post their findings on our virtual family tree.

Lantz Powell is vice president of the Chattanooga Writers Guild.