I am going through my fall yuk spell.Spring and fall pollen makes for a very unhappy me.I get sick both times of the year.So be patient with me some days will not feel good enough to get online to write.
Ok you have decided to look into the past. What on earth do you do? How do you get started?
1.Talk to every living relative you have over 50.
2.Sit in a quiet place write down everything you remember your elders saying.
3.Try to join Genealogy groups online.
4.Do not let brick walls stop you "yes it is ok to leave it along for awhile when you get frustrated"
That is all I had to go on or knew what to do when I first started out.With the exception of all this great internet access.Your biggest brick wall will be family not wanting to have anything to do with family history. One of my biggest problems was that I lost a lot of my notes.Talk about having heart failure. I also had a problem a lot of my relatives either said they did not remember or just did not want to talk about the past. That is when I learned to ask just a question or two. Like what was your fathers name? How many kids did Grandma have? I found out that you will get a lot more information by asking just a few questions at a time. Slow progress is better than none.Just hang in there.Sadly so many of my relatives are dead now.What they knew went to the grave with them.
Family Secrets was and still is my biggest hindrance. Let me tell you the older generation knows how to keep their mouths shut.My father Archie always hinted at thing but never came right out and said the whole story. I got hints that my Grand father (William Ellis Skelton born 5dec1878 AL.died 9dec1980 TX.) was religious but was never told he was a preacher.That his wife's name was Dicy (Dicy Dorthula Walker born 26jan1886 KS died 10oct1959 TX) It took me years to find out my Grandmothers maiden name. Trust me Archie Skelton never mentioned his siblings.So I had no idea how big his family was. Little did I know that a lot of his secrets would come out into the open when I was about 12 years old. I now wish I had kept a diary. That would be such a Hugh help to me now.
We were living in Orangeburg,S.C. It was the nicest place we had ever lived in.I remember that I liked living there. One day the Social Security Department sent Archie a letter.My mother opened the letter. To her surprise Archie had been married twice before her. My mother was not his second wife but his third wife.Talk about shit hitting the fan.Archie had to explain why his son was trying to locate him.A son she had no idea existed. We even found out that the fist set of children were in contact with his family. That Archie was from AL. not GA. like he had always hinted at.
So when I was 12 I found out that I had Aunts, Uncles, a living Grandfather and more than 3 half siblings. That he had been lying about his age. Archie was older than what he had been admitting to.What a shock. No I did not learn a whole lot about the Skelton family right away. That would still take many years. Archie still refused to have anything to do with his family or maybe his siblings were not ready to have anything to do with him.Somethings just seem to say hidden for what seems like forever. I did meet one of my new found half brothers along with his family that year, it was strange in a lot of ways.No one likes having bomb shells landing in their laps. Children are no exception to the rule. Very sad to say that I never got to meet my Grandfather Skelton.
It is very late so I will stop for now.
