Rebel by blood...Part I

Last week I attended funeral services for a great-uncle that had passed away. I've never been very close to Uncle Dean so when word of his death reached me, I reacted in a rather bizarre way -- profanity. It's not that I'm unsympathetic about his death and the family's grief...the profanity erupted for a purely selfish reason. I was planning to send that uncle a request for information about an ancestor (he tracked family genealogy) but was too late. Apparently he'd been pretty sick recently so, even if I had managed to get a request to him, he wouldn't have been able to assist me.

I decided that the universe was being contrary in my quest for answers...

When I was a teenager, Uncle Dean sent me information on some of our ancestors. Being too busy in high school and college to really look at the information, it got tucked away into my filing cabinet for another day. It was only recently that I unearthed the pages and was dutifully impressed with the information they contained. Uncle Dean had tracked his family name back to early-1600's England. Poring over the pages, there were some items that jumped out to me...Revolutionary war....NC militia...Indian wars...Union soldier... Cool!! I noticed that a few of my ancestors had DAR numbers (Daughters of the American Revolution). I started smiling and immediately called up an old friend to inquire about her application status as a member of DAR. She was still struggling to show proof of lineage to a member of the family who served in the Revolution. I told her about my discovery and of course, in not so many words..."I sucked". Having the DAR numbers for those ancestors who served in the American Revolution would make an application for membership in DAR much easier than for my friend. She mentioned another organization called DAC (Daughters of American Colonists) that I might look into. This is the reason I needed to contact Uncle Dean. I had notes that an ancestor was in the militia prior to the Revolution (a requirement for membership in DAC), but I couldn't find proof with online sources and thought that Uncle Dean might have something he could copy for me.

Of course, all of this was on hold since he passed away within a month of my discovery. Despite my disappointment, I joined my mother and grandmother for the planned road trip to Lincoln, Nebraska (more about that later) and IF an opportunity came up to inquire about Dean's work in genealogy, I would consider mentioning my interest as well and see where it went. Fortunately for me, a second cousin (one of Dean's sons) had picked up the genealogy work bug and we had some good times talking ancestry. To be continued....