“The shoemaker’s child goes barefoot” was what my grandmother used to say when talking about unhealthy doctors, bankrupt accountants, and hot dog consuming chefs. As a personal historian, it’s easy to forget to tend to the mysteries in your own history and pretty soon, you end up saying: “I wish I knew.” It was time to get this shoemaker’s child some footwear!

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I used spare moments to research some of the many missing links in my family history: Why did they leave Massachusetts? Why did they go to New York State and then leave soon after for Michigan? Who was in the mysterious daguerrotype of twins my mother had in her box of photos? Using ancestry.com and rootsweb.com, especially the message boards, within a year, I was corresponding with several people: a rodeo cowboy in Montana, a library researcher in St. Joseph, Missouri, a homemaker in Washington State, and Frank Passic, the dedicated historian of a small town in Michigan.

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As an early Mother’s Day present, my 87 year old mother and I took a road trip to Albion, MI in April of this year. We had breakfast with Frank, visited the graves of our ancestors, and drove around Albion College Seminary, now Albion College, where my gguncle learned how to use a telegraph key from a woman, and went on to become one of the first operators in the United States.

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As we drove and talked and saw the artifacts of life almost 200 years ago, the archaeology of our family began to click into place—personal qualities that I see in my mother: a “can-do” spirit, a love of adventure, a passion for politics and debate—were evidenced in some of these newly discovered family members.

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This is the first entry in our blog where I hope to present some useful information for both personal historians and the general public about the fun, and also the importance, of pursuing your personal history.

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A few resources for personal history detective work:

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National Archives: Located in many cities in the U.S., the archives provide a place for researching family history, taking free workshops, and connecting with research historians who can help with specific projects.

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Finding A Family History Researcher: A short and simple, but useful, blog post on how to evaluate someone you might hire to do this work.

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Quality Research Guidelines: I love this site. A professor at the Uiversity of Wisconsin who was concerned about shoddy research methodology joined with his students to build a site that contains excellent guidelines for anyone researching family history. Simple, useful, vital.