Haunted by Genealogy

I became interested in my family tree about three years ago. Sadly, my father (God rest his soul) was already quite ill and unable to answer my questions. I would give anything to be able to go back and ask him more about his youth.

He was born in the mountains of southwest Virginia and the family moved to coal mining territory in West Virginia when he was very young. I do remember some stories: about the family legend that his grandfather (as a boy back in Virginia) was in his front yard when Jesse James came through the town and shot a bullet into the fence, about how everything in the West Virginia town was coated in a fine layer of coal dust, about he and his brothers would shuck peas by putting them in baskets and rolling them down the mountain - much to his mother's chagrin, and about how he and his brothers were feeding the chickens on a neighboring farm at the same time as an escape from a prison camp nearby and when they went to feed them, heard a noise and called out, "who's there?" only to have a voice say, "nobody but us chickens" causing them to run screaming for the hills (literally). How much of it all is true, I'll never know.

What I do know is that doing his family tree gave me a huge sense of appreciation for what his ancestors did. They settled in the New World before there was a United States. Almost every one of my paternal ancestors from the late 1700s is listed as a patriot on the Daughters of the American Revolution rolls, including at least one or two who actually fought in the military. The family history is filled with Indian massacres, abductions (including at least one direct ancestor who was kidnapped by the Indians in the late 1700s - Cherokee by family accounts but could have been Shawnee, too, and returned to white civilization with her Indian child in tow), railroad accidents, and other trials related to westward expansion.

When I started watching Justified - finally got the DVDs this past year, I was surprised to realize that I had an ancestor born in Harlan, KY, the county where the show takes place. I haven't been back to the mountains of West Virginia in more years than I care to count and I was only ever a visitor, but I still find myself nostalgic for it. For the family bibles with generations of ancestors listed, for the photo albums full of pictures of loved ones in their caskets (something that the Appalachians share with my maternal Irish ancestors), for my grandmother's cooking, for traipsing up the side of a mountain only to step in an ant's nest and have to run screaming back to the house, and for an extended family that spanned generations and I've completely lost touch with. And like many others who came from the coal mining region, Grandpa got his black lung check 'til the day he died, and he and my grandmother made sure they sent all their children to college so they could get out.

My advice to everyone is sit with your grandparents or aging parents now and get all you can from them regarding your family roots. Otherwise, the day you decide you want to know where you come from, it may already be too late.