- My paternal grandfather died years before my birth, and I only knew him by photos.
- A few years ago, I started studying genealogy to better understand my family.
- I learned so much about my grandfather, and even if I don’t know him in anyone, I’m so proud of him.
I have never met my paternal grandfather, but he has always been a figure larger than life of our family. Known affectionately by my older cousins as a grandfather Louie, he was born in 1919 and died in 1987, only a few years before my birth. I have often felt stolen with him, although stories and photos fill some of the holes left by his absence.
Sometimes, if I try strong enough, I can almost imagine being the buttock of his silly jokes, playing family games invented with him in the front courtyard, or asking stories of his life as a truck driver and his work with the Teamsters in Flint, Michigan. This helps a little that my father and his six brothers share many physical attributes of Grandpa Louie (chief of bald among them), but the feeling of loss remains.
When I decided to dive into the family genealogy a few years ago, my goals were simple: I wanted to rid the path that led my family to Michigan from abroad. I knew more about the background of my paternal grandmother but not so much on a grandfather Louie. I signed up for ancestry.com and I plunged, I don’t know if I would find something interesting.
I did not expect it to make me feel.
I found so much
A few days after the start of my quest, I had found treasures. There were photos of my grandfather that I had never seen alongside military documents displaying his signature. I calculated his age at each turn, by finding a context for family stories and making comparisons with my life. Years earlier, I had sorted a box of sweet love letters exchanged between grandfather Louie and my grandmother while he served abroad. These looked like a great introduction to grandfather. The genealogy brought me even more closer.
I plunged into the young years of my grandfather by browsing newspapers from his little hometown, feeling dizzy when I find the mention of him or his loved ones. The wonderful Mundanity captured my imagination: there were descriptions of egg deliveries and agricultural trades against “fine pigs” among my great-back-Beaux. A frequent theme in the newspaper was to report on the latest injuries and the evils distressing my great-grandmother, Louie’s mother. And perhaps the most adorably, I came across a letter published to Santa Claus written by Grandfather himself at the seven.
I felt closer to him more I found
The more I dug, the more I felt close to this man who is part of me but that I never looked in the eyes. Through photos, documents and newspaper clippings – some had never been seen by my father or his brothers – I felt like a grandfather Louie, and I worked together on a secret project as if he had left me clues to find throughout his life.
Even more incredibly, I found the maternal line of Grandpa in Ireland through my third great-grandmother, Sabina, who left Achill Island during the potato starfish. At just 22 years old, she made the dangerous trip to Canada by boat and migrated to the Midwest of the United States, where she settled, married and continued the family line that allowed me to exist.
The necrologies discovered during my genealogy trip included the stories of the inhabitants of the warm behavior of Sabina, the hardworking nature and the penchant to share stories of her life in Ireland. Because she lived in the 90s, I had the chance to find two photos of Sabina – such treasures and unexpected bonuses in my quest.
While I continued to trace the life of grandfather Louie thanks to the birth of her 10 children and her proud career as a truck driver, I inevitably arrived in 1987, the year he died of the complications of leukemia. There were necrologies that listed the basics of his life and death, yes, but there were also newspaper articles paying tribute to his work.
An article from the Flint Journal described it as calm and in a good mood, even quoting some of the grandfather’s jokes. I don’t know what his voice looked like, but reading your words is a gift. Other documents posthumously praised his dedication to union work, describing him as an “institution”. I did not know how to feel such pride for someone you had never met was possible.
It didn’t bring him back
My dive into the world of amateur genealogy did not bring my grandfather back, and that has not fully attenuated the omnipresent sadness, I think that our paths have never crossed. But that gave me the gift of knowledge and the ability to connect with my grandfather like each version of himself-of the little boy who wrote letters to Santa Claus to the young soldier to the driver and the father with a personality greater than life.
There is peace knowing that the apparently banal things we leave behind could be important to those who come after us. The documents we sign, the photos we put, the quick quotes that we share with local journalists, directories and letters. These small slices of personal history create a portal between us and the members of our family.
It will always be true that I have never met my grandfather Louie. No research, photographs or brilliant articles can change this. But I comfort myself knowing that so many pieces of him are still there, very alive, safely hidden in my genealogical finds.
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