By Donnie Boursaw
We live in an age where everything we once valued and held as sacred is mocked, ignored, ridiculed, or just not believed. One of the examples you run into as a genealogist is “all those people are dead and buried, why do you waste your time with them?” To a family historian or historical researcher this is blasphemy.
Many in the world today believe that once you’re dead, that’s it, everything is over, there is nothing more. How sad for those of us who know better. Everyone is part of a family, and our job is to find them and put them where they belong on the tree.
My friend Bob researched his family back to the 1600’s in Quebec. They are French Canadians who settled in Michigan back in the day. Every researcher has an ancestor lost in the closet and no matter where you look, you can’t seem to find them. Bob once told me the story of his quest to find the burial place of his elusive relative, Great Uncle Oscar.
Bob’s wife was a beautician, and she went to a convention in Detroit each year in the spring. He would accompany her and while she participated in the offerings of her profession at Cobo Hall for the day, he would cross the bridge into Canada and take advantage of the research library in Windsor.
This time he spent the whole day and found nothing. Feeling discouraged he crossed back into America and noticed a beautiful Greek Orthodox Church as he drove along I-75. As an amateur photographer he always carried his camera, and he wanted to take some pictures of the beautiful church. He pulled into the parking lot, exited his car, and started clicking. Noticing an adjacent cemetery, he decided it was a Catholic burial ground. Curious. He wanted to verify his assumption and noticing an elderly woman sitting on her porch enjoying the evening he crossed the cemetery to ask her.
The lady had lived in the area a long time and told him all about the cemetery and its relationship to the Greek Orthodox Cathedral it bordered and the Catholic’s it serviced. Thanking her for the history lesson, Bob started walking back to his car. Glancing down he noticed his camara was on. He was certain he had turned it off, but shrugged, shut it down again and continued.
Before he had crossed the cemetery the camara seemed to come on by itself again. This happened twice. The third time, in frustration, he tried to discover the reason behind the camara’s erratic behavior. Turning and sighting the device he aimed it at the ground and looked through the viewer, at his feet was the gravestone of Uncle Oscar, his birthdate and his death date etched in the weather worn stone.
Having spent several years trying to find this gravesite and prove that Uncle Oscar had existed and was buried in Michigan, Uncle Oscar was ready to be found, and he directed Bob to his burial place.
Now Uncle Oscar has his family recorded and the milestones of his life chronicled on a Family Group Sheet and has taken his place on the family tree.
