You Don't Know Where You're Going If You Don't Know Where You've Been 

This post is written with my cousin Victoria in mind.   We keep in touch mostly through messages on FB.   Recently she's found a couple of pretty good break throughs. The rabbit hole Vitctoria is  chasing, belongs to her Great Uncle Peter Burger; the brother in-law to my  great aunt. Just a short while ago, she found a gentleman from the area where her uncle lasted lived. Victoria was able to talk to this man who turned out to be Peter's stepson and was with him him when he died.  Uncle Peter, is no longer just a name to her now, he's now a person. She mentioned these to her sister who wasn't as excited as she was, after all it's just history, and really isn't that what genealogy is all about?  Personal history?  

For me and a lot of other people studying and following  your family tree down different paths and rabbits holes, really is a study of yourself.   It started for me as something to talk to my Grandma Beck about, and then it turned into so much more.  

I've learned so much about my family, such as where we physically come from. We mostly come from  Germany, Poland and Russia.  I'm learning from finding living relatives that we're in many states, mostly Wisconsin and Illinois, but also California and Ohio to mention just a few.  You might find out that phyiscal traits run strong in the family here's an example, on the left is my second great grandfather, the right isone of my brothers. Even with over a hundred years between thier lives you can see that they are related.  As some of you fellow genealogists know, other phyiscal attributes, especially medical ones are what we are searching for.  I've learned that heart disease and strokes run pretty high in our family history.  

Other areas that seem to cross over generations and amongst living relatives, are interests and talents.  A number of my realtives are talented in the arts, both music and drawing.  My sister and one of my brothers share these talents with my Grandpa Beck, Uncle George Beck and Uncle Ray Luetzow.  I share the interest of sewing and crochet with my Grandma Beck and Mom.  My great Grandma (on my mother's side) and I seem to like to dabble in writing.

Occupations seem to be shared, some it in the past may because the males in a family followed family traditions or the family business, which included being butchers.  Now, it seems that a common occupation has been in the computer or IT fields where quite a few of us have made a living. One other occupation shared over past and present occupations is sales, both commerical and retail.

Of course not all treasures you find while searching your roots are good treasures. You can also find the dark side of your family.  For every jewel of a relative you find you can just as easily find outcasts or undesirable individuals.  I have found both. One of the jewels of the family is a military leader. The military plays a strong tradition in my family, the most notable soldier being General Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow.  He is credited with forming theLützow Free Corps, they were also known as the Black Troop.

After death he was honored with a permament grave site in Berlin. He also had several war ships named after him. Some of my relatives who would more described as the black sheep, include my great grandpa Leonhardt Beck and great greatmother Marie Beck. Marie, you see was born out of wedlock. That doesn't seem like a big deal now, but it was in the 1800's. So much so, Marie's mother Wallburga Obermeir had to travel two parrishes over in order to find a priest who would bapist Marie. Leonhardt became an outcast when he met and fell in love with Marie. From the best of what I can piece togethor, Leonhardt was going to marry Marie, they were out one day and Leonhardt got into a serious fight with a public offical over the fact that Marie was illegitimate and beat the man so gravely that he was either severely injured or killed.  At this point Leonhardt's father, Sebastian, kicked Leonhardt out of his home and life.  Leonhardt and Marie left almost immediately after the fight for America and got married as soon as they landed in New York.  He never spoke to Leonhardt again, even when Leonhardt and Marie travelled back to Germany in the 1900's and Leonhardt begged his father for forgiveness.  

So wherever your rabbit holes take you, you can't get there, without knowing where you came from.