Chasing Dead Ancestors

Who would I invite to dinner if I could invite anyone? The answer to this question is easy for me -- my paternal grandfather, John Frederick Goehring. "Granddad" -- as I've always called him -- died six months before I was born so we never got to meet. By all accounts, he was a pretty special guy. I’ve had 80-year-old men who knew him when they were children tell me how remarkable “Uncle Johnny” was. John Frederick Goehring standing on Snip, his "trick" horse (Don't worry. Snip is very much alive. Well, at least he was when the photo was taken.) I've started writing a short "biographical sketch", I guess you can call it, about Granddad just to try to get to know him a little better. I have so many questions that I wish I could ask him, including: Does he know why his father's family made the decision to come to America in the 1850s? Did he really operate a wagon freight service from Indianola to points inland? Why did he and hi...

My Goehring family has farmed and ranched the same land in Concho County, Texas, for 115 years . My great-grandfather John Lewis Goehring bought the property in 1903 along with his son/my grandfather John Frederick Goehring. My father was born in 1932 in the old house on the property and my parents were still living on the property in 1962 when I was born (although my birth occurred in a hospital 60 miles away). My parents still live on and work the same land today. The original house (with modifications) on the property since 1903 purchase. The house built by John Frederick Goehring in the early 1940s.

John Henry Jones, Jr. and Julia Alexander Brevard An absolutely impossible task. So I chose this portait of my great-grandparents John Henry Jones, Jr. and Julia Alexander Brevard because of the following story. A friend was visiting and staying in the guest room in my house where the photo is displayed. She asked me where I had the "old-timey" photo made of me and my husband. I'd never noticed the family resemblance between myself and my great-grandmother until my friend thought the photo was an image we'd had made at a tourist attraction. For the record, my great-grandfather and my husband look nothing alike. Sigh of relief.

I got my start in genealogy before I even knew there was a word that described "chasing dead ancestors." One summer, Dad, Mom and I took Grandma (my mom's mom) on a two-week trip through the Deep South trying to find cousins that Grandma had lost contact with over the decades or had only ever known via letters. (Remember snail mail?) I was only about seven years old, so I was absolutely no help with this process, but I was acutely aware of our mission and thought it was the grandest adventure. I'm certain that my memories and the reality of that trip are worlds apart, but I still remember some things vividly: A distant cousin's huge old house filled with dozens of grandfather clocks that all chimed on the hour, but none of them in unison. Driving hours through the countryside to find the old family homestead. (I'm sure the reality was more like a 10-mile drive.) Finding a relative in Atlanta who had written and published a history on our Johnson family,...

Recently, I was served up a sponsored post* on Facebook for the " 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks " challenge. (Obviously, my cookies gave me away.) I've been spending more time as of late working on genealogy and thought this would be a good way to keep me on task this year. So I'll give this challenge a go and hopefully stick with it throughout 2018. I'll try to post on this blog, Instagram and maybe Twitter (but probably not Facebook because it really annoys me these days and I spend as little time on it as possible). (*I'm assuming it was a sponsored post, or else Facebook wouldn't have bothered to show it to me. Which is to say I'm surprised I saw it at all given Facebook's proclivities.)