Finding Hannah

What I found stopped my heart and changed my life completely.

Genealogy is a puzzle, a mystery that unravels and sorts itself out (sometimes with more questions than answers) the more you research.  Finding missing pieces continually drives me forward.  The more dead ends I encounter, the more compelled I am to push forward and discover my ancestors and the lives they lived. 

When I started researching my family tree with Ancestry.com, I couldn't wait to find answers about my paternal great-grandmother, Hannah English Stafford.  Very little was known about her.  I knew she died when my grandfather, Frank Stafford, was little boy, and my father said the cause of death (from what he understood) was a brain aneurysm.  All that seemed a little vague to me, and I began the journey trying to discover more about her.

My grandfather came from a small town in western North Carolina called Spruce Pine.  Shortly after his mother's death, the 1930 census shows he moved with his father, John Stafford, and John's new wife, Sadie, to Washington County, Tennessee.  Several years later, he met and married my grandmother and finally settled in Baltimore, Maryland, until he died in 1982.

I began with my grandfather's birth certificate.  The state of North Carolina started recording birth certificates in 1913, but I assumed since my grandfather lived in a rural area and was born in 1913, no birth certificate was filed.  Therefore, in 1941, he applied for a delayed birth certificate. 

(Can we just pause for a moment at the fact the midwife was named Biddie Buchanan?  Could a midwife get a better name than that?)

From this, I had his father and mother's names.  My aunt also gave me her birth date, November 9, 1878, and death date, January 15, 1921.  I plugged all this information in.  And those little leaves started to show up.

I found her in the censuses for 1880, 1900, and 1910 when she lived in an area near Spruce Pine called Snow Creek.  In 1920, the census states she lived in the Grassy Creek area of Spruce Pine.  This census particularly interested me because this is the last census before she died.  Hannah was forty at this point, and my grandfather was a little boy of eight.  She had a total of six children in her home in 1920, the oldest being 20, the youngest six.  I can see they rented their home, and my great-grandfather worked as a laborer at the Harris Clay & Mining Company.

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Now I really needed to find her death certificate.  Even early on in my research, I realized how important death certificates are.  Not only do they list the cause, date, and place of death, but they usually will give you the deceased person's parents' names and places of birth, a little gem taking you into the next generation. 

What I found stopped my heart and changed my life completely.

Hannah died in Morganton, North Carolina, a town a little over forty miles from her home.  And she died at a psychiatric facility called Morganton State Hospital. 

No one ever mentioned this.  Ever.  The idea of a state hospital started all sorts of feelings and emotions running through me.  Why was she there?  What happened in her life to get her there?  How much did my grandfather know?  What was this hospital like?  Who went there?

I knew a journey had started for me.  I needed as many answers as I could possibly find, and I would exhaust every resource until I found them.

Discovering the Undiscovered - Getting Started with Your Family Tree

The initial start to finding your roots begins with you.  Most likely, you know your own birthdate.  You probably know your parents birthdates and places of birth.  Take that as the leaping pad into your journey. 

I started with Ancestry.com.  Yes, I pay for it.  But they also offer a free two-week trial.  For me, the fee is incredibly worth it.  Second Snack gives a great review of his experience.  I find the site incredibly user friendly, and from what I can tell, Ancestry.com adds more and more resources all the time.  Also, when you type in a name of an ancestor, these little leaves start to appear next to the person's name.  For me, these little hints cause an almost addictive kind of thrill where you have to keep searching and searching until you find out more and more answers (and more and more questions.)  Be prepared to be in front of the computer for a long time; the first time I researched, I stayed in the same chair for five hours without moving. 

Family Search is another site I recommend.  And it's free! You can begin searching for your ancestors on their search page found here.  On thing I really like about Family Search is you can begin your journey by narrowing down your search by country and then by state.  (You can find this as you scroll down on their main search page.)  I found a lot about my grandmother's family in Tennessee by searching on the state's marriage records.

Many people have misconceptions about starting their family tree because they either don't know where to start, or they feel they already know a lot.  Jessie McKinley wrote a great article for Family Share about the misconceptions that can come with researching.  Even if you think your great aunt already researched everything you need to know, I guarantee you technological advances have given you even more gems and more avenues of research.

Merlin...probably not your ancestor.

One thing to beware of while you're searching, especially on Ancestry.com:  those little leaf hints can link to family trees already established on the site.  Not all of the information on these family trees has been verified.  It can be incredibly addictive and exciting to take your tree back further and further, but all this information must be verified through records and other established sources.  I have a friend who was tracing her tree through another member's tree that claimed (highly unlikely) that Merlin was her ancestor.  So just be cautious.  Even if Merlin isn't your ancestor, you will find amazing, life changing things.

Diving Backwards

Growing up, I never was a fan of history.  Boring, boring, boring.  None of those people mattered to me, and remembering dates seemed like an enormous waste of time.  And those freaky people who stared back at you in old photos! Could they look any more stoic and depressed?  I figured those people never saw a day of fun in their life.

I suppose growing older and wiser (depends who you ask about this one!) opened me to the fact of the rich heritage that precedes us.  Childhood, education, falling in love, building a family, religion, careers, struggle, war, growing older, health and sickness, and departing the earth.  Times may have changed, but I don’t think people have too much.  

Even though world history didn’t intrigue me as a child, family history always interested me.  My parents divorced when I was very young.  My mother, the daughter of missionaries, grew up in the Belgian Congo and the Philippines, and we didn’t keep in touch with her family regularly as they scattered across the US upon returning.  My father came from a boisterous family who settled in Baltimore around the time of WWII.  Many happy weekends and holidays were spent at my grandparents’ house with aunts, uncles and cousins.  

On my father’s side, no one ever quite knew where we all came from.  My maiden name being Stafford suggests England.  But there were so many family “rumors” over the years that we tended to have a mishmash of heritages:  “Oh, your grandfather’s mother probably had some Italian (pronounced Eye-talian) in her;” “I’m pretty sure we’ve got Indian in us somewhere.”  

About five years ago I finally endeavored to research all the questions I had.  And that search has brought a richness to my life in ways I never expected.  I hope to share my research journey and hopefully encourage others to start a search of their own.  I can honestly promise you the search will change your life and cut through your heart in ways you could never have imagined.  

I’m calling it Chasing Hannah in honor of my paternal great-grandmother.  What I found out about her changed my life completely and opened my heart. And broke it.  But that’s a post to come.

I am not a writer, nor do I claim to be.  My background is in the theatre.  And some experience in photography.  I’m a visual person.  I hope to include many photographs of my own in this blog.  Some will be old, most hopefully come from my eye and camera. 

I also love food.  Food brings people together in beautiful ways.  Laughter, conversation, a way to connect with family, colleagues, and friends old and new.  My husband and I have a food blog called The Pêche.  Much love has been put into that.  Food plays a huge part in our lives, and hopefully a lot of discussion will surround cooking as well.

So I’m ready to start my journey, and hopefully you can start yours as well.  Onward.  And backward through history!