Happy New Year everyone! I’m a bit late getting this one out due to travel and holiday hustle and bustle but it’s given me time to reflect on my genealogy journey. While continuing to document names, dates and places and growing/completing my family tree overtime I also like to add new elements. Recently, I was contacted by a cousin wondering if a certain genetically inherited disease was ever documented in our family and then realized this area is lacking in my current family tree. Subsequently, this year I will make efforts to additionally document medical information for ancestors so that in the future I might be able to answer any medical inquiries more thoroughly.
In October while in Wisconsin, I detoured to a town in Illinois and met my father’s cousin Jim Atwell. Jim’s grandfather, my great-grandfather, built the house in Round Lake, Illinois where he is currently living. Over the years I had heard stories and was shown photos of the small cinderblock home in various stages of completion so naturally I was excited to see what it looked like in 2019. From what I’ve been told, the home was started sometime after Will (William H. Stone Atwell) retired from the Wabash Railroad (maybe late 1930’s?, I need to verify this information). When Will died in May, 1944, I don’t even think the exterior of the home had been completed. Although our visit was a bit short, only three hours, Jim did have time to take me to a couple cemeteries and share these wonderful photos.
I feel so privileged to have been able to meet so many members of my “family tree”. People whose stories and photos would have gone unknown to me without my persistent digging and questioning. Each of them have added something to my research and my soul.
We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors wisdom. – Maya Angelou
