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Wartime has brought us many slogans.
World War II was full of slogans to promote the war effort. One of
them was “Loose lips sinks ships!” meaning that idle talk could
be heard by enemy spies that might result in aiding the enemy. The
slogan is still used today for keeping secrets.
Sometimes in our quest to find our
ancestors, it seems that there are well-guarded secrets concerning
our family histories. And that may be true! Sealed lips about a
family member or the events that at one time were deemed to be
unfavorable by the rest of the family was not uncommon. So many
reasons to keep secrets: births out of wedlock, unfaithful spouses,
law breakers, escaping the facts of the past, even the fact that a
child was disabled or considered to be an “idiot.” Names were
even changed and the family would move great distances to protect the
secret! And these “secrets” often impedes our search for our
genealogy. Like the WW II slogan warns, family gossips or others
will eventually let the “cat out of the bag” (sort of speak) and
the secret is known. For some in the family, the truth is
undesirable, while others now understand what happened and doors to
the past have been opened.
It seems that during war or other
serious situations idle talk could lead to destruction or grave
consequences, while other situations that same kind of idle talk can
lead to learning more about the truth. I have discovered lately that
just casual conversation can lead to new discoveries that were never
secrets, but, rather, just undisclosed information. I mentioned
several of these in a presentation I have given “Research Skills
vs. Just Plain Luck!” This July 4th. after the
dedication of a memorial to Revolutionary War Patriots and Soldiers
in Christian County, KY, many of my cousins and other relations went
to eat some Bar-B-Que. Chad Word and his family sat across from me
and the conversation got around to the Civil War and one grave marker
that was basically “swallowed” by a tree trunk growing around it
leaving only the top and base showing. Merril Rogers was a union
soldier during the Civil War and Chad was able to replace the marker
with a military one. Since, I have a Rogers line in Christian Co., I
had to ask where was he from and who does he descend from? The
answer was Robert Rogers and Lucretia Dillon... my ancestors, too!
In just the last few months, I discovered by the casual mentioning of
where some of my ancestors were buried that a friend also had people
buried there and that led to this same Robert Rogers & Lucretia
Dillon being common ancestors!
Mentioning a cemetery in the past led
me to the discovery that some Internet friends were cousins thru
common ancestors in Breckinridge Co., KY. And then there was the
time, several years ago, a neighbor just two doors over from our
house stopped me as I was walking the dog down the block, “come up
here on the porch and sit for awhile I have a story to tell you,”
he said. Hard to resist a story, right? After the story came idle
chat, that led to him complaining about his wife being on the
computer too much. He then said that she does some of the work from
her job on it and that she helps a lot of people with their research
of the Perry County Carters. I didn't know that Donna did genealogy
research! Was he talking about Perry Co., IN? Yes, he said, she has
a huge database of the Carter family that were early pioneers of
Perry Co., IN. My wife has Carter family from Perry County. They
were the same Carter family and we soon found the common ancestor
and several other family lines, as well.
Idle chat can have some serious
consequences in “Love and War” while it can lead to new
discoveries in the search of your family history. Is it luck or just
fate that these casual conversations can find cousins? Remember as
you idly talk, the person behind you may be a foreign spy or may be
an unknown cousin!
- Written by JGWest.
