The Genealogy Begins

When I decided to start hard core research, I was lucky enough that my dad's half sister had quite a bit of information on their mom's side of the family.  Within just several weeks, I was able to trace my grandmother's maternal side back to the late 1600's - Van Houten and Duselder.  Everything was well documented and pretty much just laid out in front of us.  Her paternal side posed a bit of a problem.  Her father died when she was 14 and his mother had married several times and had children with several men.  His mother's side was easy to trace - Potter and Cady, but his father's side is still a mystery.  The Wilcox family is simply not ready to give up their history, I guess.

This past fall, we took a cemetery tour of the area my dad is from and took gravestone rubbings of the stones for my grandmother's side of the family.  We catalogued the Van Houtens and a couple of Duselders.  We found where my grandmother's father and his mother are buried, although there were no headstones.  We are currently in the process of purchasing small markers for them.  We visited the gravesites of my dad's father, mother and brother.  I found my grandmother's grave very emotional.  Perhaps because my father had not allowed me to go with him the one time he saw her between 1956 when he was taken away and 2007 when she died.  Perhaps because the only time I ever laid eyes on her was in her casket.  I made sure I hid my tears from my dad.  He does not have kind feelings towards his mother because of the pain she caused him and I respect that.  I don't expect him to let go of that, nor do I expect him to understand why I don't share his bitterness and why I have sadness for a grandmother I never knew.  But I digress.  We visited libraries and courthouses and searched for records.  We came back with a lot of useful information.  Having concrete documentation is such a satisfying feeling.  Entering everything into Ancestry and Family Tree Maker took an immense amount of time, but it was so much fun.  So was finding photos of gravestones from the East Coast on findagrave.

Despite the hundreds of people we were able to trace, document and enter, we were still left with a mystery, and not the Wilcox mystery.  My dad's father was still a mystery and it was a mystery we were beginning to think we would never solve.