Old Things and Dead People

“I don’t get your interest in old things and dead people.”  My friend rolled her eyes and playfully elbowed me.  “How boring!”

I just smiled.  Either you “get it” or you don’t.

She didn’t “get” my passion for plundering in thrift stores looking for vintage treasures or tromping through cemeteries.

But I’ve got it…bad.

It started with a feeling when I was about six.  It was an intense feeling of “like.” I liked how I felt sitting on the shiny wooden pews in the white church on the hill. I liked the colorful stained-glass windows. I liked the pleasant smell of my brick schoolhouse. I liked how the sun streamed through tall windows and cast sunbeams on my lined writing paper.  I liked the feel of my desk, its wood surface scarred by scissors and pencil points, and how the scars appeared in my crayon colorings. I liked the long hallway with high ceilings and creaky, dark wood floors.  I liked the smell that tickled my nose when I opened a book on the library shelf.  I liked the persistent clanking of the radiator heating on a cold winter's day.

As a military dependent, we moved frequently—something I disliked. My life was always in a perpetual state of change and chaos caused by frequent moves.  It was on a trip back to visit family when I realized—regardless of how much time elapsed between visits to my grandparents’ homes or my great uncle’s farm—nothing ever changed.  The same doilies were on the coffee table.  The closet smelled the same. The same dusty bottle of Calamine lotion was in its proper place in the medicine cabinet.  I liked the “sameness.”  I felt loved and safe when I was surrounded by the familiar.    

Adulthood brought more change and more chaos.  Shortly after my divorce, I decided to surround myself with things that brought me joy.  Things that had withstood the test of time.  Things that had a history.  Things that recaptured that sweet "sameness" from my childhood.

Cast iron skillets stir memories of my paternal grandfather standing at the big white stove frying bacon.  Sheer tie-back curtains awaken memories of morning sunshine streaming in the window at my uncle’s farm.  Delicate doilies bring memories of my maternal grandmother crocheting by the glow of soft lamplight. A crisply ironed embroidered pillowcase ushers in the image of my paternal grandmother spritz ironing while watching Roller Derby on a black and white TV.  White enamel bowls cue my senses of snapping green beans and shucking corn fresh from the field.  A vintage quilt reminds me of burrowing deep under the covers on winter nights.  Creaky rocking chairs take me back to country summer nights spent on the front porch listening to my great-uncle tell stories of days gone by about relatives who died before I was born.

It was those very stories that piqued my interest in my lineage, but it was a happenstance conversation with my father’s cousin that ignited my passion for genealogy.  He’d been documenting our family tree for decades and had recently discovered one of our ancestral lines traced back to the 1400s.  He told me about relatives fleeing France in 1685 to escape religious persecution; about family patriots fighting in some of the fiercest battles in the American Revolution; and about a great-grandfather serving in the Royal British Navy during the bombardment of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1882.

Suddenly, I needed to know “from whence I came.” To know the names of the ancestors whose DNA is woven within my genes.  To know their stories.  So, I began collecting relatives.

I found the ship’s manifest on microfiche at the National Archives, where my paternal great-great-grandmother emigrated from England in 1888. I’ve located my 5th great-grandparents’ dirt-covered headstones in the middle of a North Carolina cornfield.  I’ve proven my lineage back to great-grandfathers who fought in the American Revolution. I’ve seen the old wooden pole, on display at the Museum of the Albemarle, that those same grandfathers boldly drove into the ground, declaring their independence from England.  I’ve stood in the house built by my 5th great-grandfather in 1803.  I was gifted my great-great-grandfather's British Royal Navy sea journal.  I’m a descendant of a founder of public education, delegates of the North Carolina Continental Congress, a knight in Surrey, England, and rumored—but not yet proven—to be related to Blackbeard.  I’ve concluded I don’t have a family tree; I have a family briar patch. The vines are so tangled that the same names show up repeatedly in both my paternal and maternal lines, which explains why I’m my own 6th cousin.   

My love for old things and dead people comes down to one thing: connection. The old things connect me to specific memories of times when I felt loved and places where I felt safe.  As for all the dead people…if it wasn’t for their familial connection, I wouldn’t exist!  I am part of their legacy; they are part of my story.    

So, while it may be boring, I’ll just keep on collecting old things and dead people.

But the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him,

And His righteousness to children’s children.  - Psalm 103:17