Senior Connections Senior Connections June 2019 | Page 4

What’s new in family history
Dale Kovar
HJ GENERAL MANAGER
When it comes to family history, I’ve been a pas-
sive participant.
I’ve never paid money to ancestry.com, spent
hours poring over birth and death records, or trav-
eled to remote places seeking clues about what once
was. That’s not to say I’m not interested.
Every few years, a distant relative contacts me
with some type of question. I gladly exchange in-
formation we each have, and add it to my collec-
tion.
Enough of my relatives have been active in ge-
nealogical research so I don’t think there’s much
new I could discover.
Saved in my memory chest (my dad’s World War
II trunk) are a number of items family historians
compiled, including:
• A six-foot wide ancestry chart in type size
smaller than what you’re reading now.
• A 337-page hardcover book, which has a com-
plete index in the back with every name men-
4
Senior
tioned.
•A DVD of my cousins’ trip to Moravia,
Czechoslovakia, searching out family roots.
Ultimately, we all go back to Adam and Eve,
or more recently, Noah’s family on the ark. Since
then, however, there hasn’t been the greatest re-
cord-keeping system.
Although family members have turned up
some European references, it isn’t until the im-
migration to America in roughly the 1870-80s
that we can start tracing back lineage with any
detail.
I notice that in any genealogical record I’ve
ever seen, there have never been any monkeys,
or partial monkeys, accounted for. Sort of ruins
the evolution theory, doesn’t it?
The latest family inquiry sparked a new proj-
ect for me, though.
The next time we make a round of visits to
the graves of loved ones, I plan to do my own
documenting.
With a screen-shot of a satellite image of each
cemetery, I can then on paper identify the grave
location of each family member. Then next time
someone asks, we’ll then have a map to go by.
That will be my contribution to family history.
Otherwise, I’m content to wait until Resurrec-
tion Day and ask everyone directly.
Connections June 2019
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