Beginnings - Week 1 of # 52 Ancestors

Well - trying again with Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks project. Last year, I made it as far as week 9 - let's see if I can do better this year. Each week, there is a writing prompt for me to think about and share something. Most weeks it will probably be a post here on my blog - other weeks it may just be something I share in a FB group I've set up for my family - or even something I share on Instagram or Twitter. If you'd like to follow my posts on my blog - just click on the #52Ancestors label in the left hand column.

The prompt for week 1 is Beginings. 

When I read the prompt, I immediately thought about how I got hooked on genealogy. 

I grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts and attended the Unitarian Church. In those days, at the end of Sunday School year for 3rd graders, you received your own Bible. I received mine on May 17, 1970 (somehow I find it hard to believe that was 50 years ago - and that I've been doing anything for fifty years!) 

Like in many Bibles, there is a section in the middle for a Family register and a basic family tree. 

I can still remember sitting down with my grandfather William John Schickler shortly thereafter, and filling out my Mom's side of the family tree. He told me the story of his father William Frederick George Schickler and how he really wanted to have a son so he could pass along the family names. His first child was a daughter - Freida, soon followed by two more daughter, Catherine and Emily. Child number four was another daughter - and perhaps fearing that he would never have a son - she was named Wilhelmina Frederica Georgiana! She was followed by three more children - William, Frederick and George. 

And with that story I was hooked!. 

Sometime after that, I must have sat down with my father - who helped me fill out his side of the tree - and showed me a couple of books the family owned - Ancestors and Descendants of Albert Coe and Deborah Prentice written by my grandmother's brother and Robert Coe, Puritan which took the family line back to the 1630s in Massachusetts. 

And for a girl growing up outside of Boston - who loved visiting Lexington and Concord, the Freedom Trail, Bunker Hill, the U.S.S. Constitution, and Plimouth Plantation - knowing my ancestors were here at the same time as many of these events - just made me want to know more. 

So fifty years later . . . here I am - still obsessed with learning more about my ancestors, their lives and the times they lived in.