Invaluable connections
Photo by Ida Brown Deborah Stewart Rowell enjoys spending hours discovering new information about her family , including unknown relatives .
Genealogy ’ s search of the past offers understanding of the present
Story by Monique Harrison Henderson Contributing Writer
Almost 44 years ago , Deborah Stewart Rowell found herself pregnant with her first child – and deeply longing for a
clearer sense of who she was and where she came from . It wasn ’ t the first time Rowell deeply longed for family . Her mother died when she was just four , and her father passed away when she was 13 . Because her mom died when she was so young , Rowell did not have strong connections to her mother ’ s side of the family .
“ I was about to have a baby – a daughter – and I just couldn ’ t stop thinking about how I didn ’ t know who my people were , especially on my mother ’ s side ,” she recalled . “ I kept having this strong sense that if I didn ’ t know where I ’ d been and where my people had been , I couldn ’ t possibly know where I was going , either . It was a bad feeling .”
Rowell soon threw herself into genealogical research , hunting down clues on the members of her mother ’ s side of the family . She started by writing down what she knew about her family – the names of her parents and grandparents , as well as the birth dates that she knew .
14 • TIMELESS MERIDIAN