ANCESTORS

  

My Aunt Rainie had come to visit. She brought her geneaology with her. I remember the smell of old paper. I had seen four generation charts before. Quite a few members of our church seemed to have at least a partially filled four generation chart, showing at least some of their great great grandparents. But Rainie had an extended generation chart with her. It was not just the standard legal pad size piece of paper, rather it folded out like a roadmap into eight or ten generations.

I was intrigued. When I was younger our family lived in a rented house on Beck Avenue in Cody, Wyoming. The owners had left a trunk of books in the basement. The books had that same smell of old paper. It is an intoxicating scent. It speaks of ages long past, of the clash of battles so far away that they only whisper and sigh. Frederick the Great was in the books and Napoleon and others and though the words were bigger than I could easily read, the engraved pictures kept me occupied for hours. I daydreamed of long ago strife and glory.

Now some of the Germanic sounding names as I had seen in the History Books were on Rainie’s genealogical road map. I wondered about the people behind the names. Who were they? What did they do for work or for fun? Did they have to go to war? How did their children come to be in the western United States, as my ancestors?

I decided to start copying down the names. But there were at least a couple hundred names and I ran out of time. Rainie left and took the chart with her. I had been bitten by the bug.

I wanted to have all the names Rainie had. I wanted to know who they all were. I wanted to see the sights they had seen and do the things they did.    I knew that I belonged to these people and I really wanted to know more about them.

Rainie had also brought a four generation chart, but it was not like the others I had seen.
Instead of names in the blank spots there were photos of my family members. Their eyes gazed out at me from another time. Did they still exist? Did they know about me? Did they care?
If I tried to honor them would they honor me?

A few years later, I took a class in geneology at BYU.   One of the assignments was to go to the library and research  one of our ancestors on the census records.    I chose my Mother's grandfather,  Anthony Meredith Sharp.  The family legend was that He and his brother, Jeff, had come west to Montana looking for their Father, Abraham who went west and said he would send for the family.  He never returned and they never heard from him again.

I got help from a reference librarian who situated me at a microfilm reader, and set me up with a roll of microfilm from the Kentucky 1850 Census, for Russellville, Kentucky.  I began to turn the crank on the reader and the blurred negative images began to glide past my gaze.  They were in a difficult scrawled hand and were at first hard to make out, but after a few minutes I began to get the drift and was able to read most of the  entries.  Over an hour passed.  No sign of Anthony.  I began to get a bit droopy and unmotivated.  The movement of the film had an almost hypnotic effect. 

Suddenly I was shocked awake from the stupor.  The family name Sharp was before my eyes.  The head of houshold was a woman of 63, named Elizabeth,  there were two ten year old boys, Anthony and Jefferson.
It is hard to describe the feeling of meeting a great grandparent.  I was surprised to realize that my eyes were stinging.  I surrepticiously  wiped at them, embarrassed by the sudden emotion.

Now Grandpa Anthony and I are old acquaintences.  I have taken his line back many generations.  One of his Grandfathers is Charlemagne.  My addiction to Family History has only grown since then.  I don't know everything about my ancestors, but I know they still exist.  You don't feel love from something that no longer exists.