In 2002 when we were travelling to Chicago for a summer vacation, we stopped to take a photo of the Gary, Indiana sign. It says, simply, “The People of Gary Welcome You.”
The slogan on the sign reminds me of the song from “The Music Man.”
We have a copy of that photo hanging just inside the entrance of our house. We want you to know that when you come for a visit, these “People of Gary Welcome You” to our home.
My sister is in Chicago this week for vacation and asked me for any guidance in helping her to find the same sign as she’d like to make a similar picture. I texted her a copy of the photo so she’d know what she is looking for.
I had another sort of “The People of Gary Welcome You” experience this weekend.
As I told you some time ago, Lisa and I have been working on some family history. She’s the senior genealogist. I’m just kind of tagging along for the ride. Still, it is a lot of fun to discover information about your roots. It’s kind of like working a massive jigsaw puzzle piece by piece.
Incidentally, my cousin Mike (my mother’s brother’s son) has also started tracing his family roots and I keep getting emails from him as he fills in puzzle pieces for his family.
I really got into this back in the spring (after the 1940 U.S. Census was released). You might recall, I wrote about visiting theMagnolia Cemetery in Collierville recently to pay my respects to my great grandfather, Pittman Carpenter.
I wanted to learn more about his first wife (my great grandmother) and so we went into Ancestry.com on Friday night and started searching. A gentleman in Memphis - a distant cousin, I suppose - had some family tree info on Pittman and his family (though not much about my great grandmother). This distant cousin did have genealogy informattion that linked to my grandfather, so I went to check it out.
No doubt, he had the family tree for my grandfather.
And his grandfather.
And his grandfather.
You can see where this is heading.
This gentleman - and many others confirming his work - have traced the family line all the way back to Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, England (just north of London).
Our family’s patriarch, Arthur Gary (son of Nathaniel Gary and Joan Brand) was born May 20, 1599 in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, England. He married the former Frances Warman in 1625. Together, and along with their children (including William, born in 1628, who is next in the lineage of my family), they traveled by ship to America in 1639. They disembarked in Nantucket, MA.
Arthur died December 17, 1666 in Roxbury, Massachusetts (which is on the southern edge of Boston…or for you baseball fans out there, about 4 miles due south of Fenway Park). William continued the family tree and it descended through 12 generations to make it to me. Holly and Paul are the 13th generation (or 14th if you want to include Arthur’s pop, Nathaniel in the line. I didn’t go any further back than him).
Wow. What a discovery of family treasure. I could definitely feel the adrenaline rush as I was able to trace my family lineage.
From Massachusetts, later generations of the family made it down the coast from to Virginia and eventually to S.C.
My grandfather told me once that our family came to Memphis from S.C. Indeed, his grandfather was the one who made that trip sometime in the second half of the 1800s. And now we have the documentation that backs up the anecdotal information.
Family history stuff is fascinating. I’ll admit, I’ve been bitten by the bug. I’ve put in all the family tree stuff and I’ve taken it to a stopping point for now. I didn’t find out that additional information about my dad’s mother’s mother, but I’ll keep looking. I promise that.
In the meantime, as you can see, I’ve discovered much more.
JG
(Source: ancestry.com)
Originally posted 7/15/2012
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