Searching for Puritan Ancestors

When my great-grandpa Anthony Colby arrived in Salem, Massachussetts on April 8, 1630, nobody stamped his passport. He was undocumented. Did anybody keep track of folks in those days?

I went underground as a sleuth in London, England to find out.

Forty five minutes outside the city is a town called Kew.
I followed my leader down the road and arrived at . . .

The British National Archives.

Great-grandpa Colby wouldn't have been admitted. It took a passport and two forms of ID to get through the door. They took my photo at the entrance, and matched it to my face when I got to the desk inside, where they took my official photo.

Security was tighter than the airport. Bags, purses, coats, notebooks and pens had to be stowed in lockers. I carried my camera, magnifying glass, a loose piece of paper and a #2 graphite pencil (without an eraser) in a clear plastic bag to get my readers card.

The room reminded me of the DMV. There were several computers and I waited my turn, then took a short on-line course about how to handle old documents (which I skimmed) followed by a short on-line quiz (which I flunked.) I returned to the course, passed the quiz and qualified for a card, which unlocked the gates to each library room—where they searched my plastic bag each time I went in or out. It was starting to seem like a big deal.

I was glad I'd done my homework. This wasn't the LDS Family History Library: no sweet missionaries hovering around with smiles and helpful tips. These were serious historians who expected me to know preliminary facts, speaking with accents and vocabulary I could barely understand. After a little research I requested "a bundle."

There were 5,000 bundles of documents stored in damp, vermin-infested warehouses on London docks for hundreds of years. They were consolidated in one building in 1883 and moved to this new facility in 1997, but by then many had deteriorated or been eaten by rats. Just 1,450 survived, and one of them had my name on it.

Luckily, I'd just completed a course on how to unwrap my bundle.

I put on my white cotton gloves and examined the sheepskin binding.

It slowly dawned on me that I was looking at the actual record.

The pages were of vellum and parchment.

The writing was beautiful and undecipherable.

Several years worth of ship's records were bound together in the same book,
and I could read the dates and recognize a few words here and there.

And I discovered that yes, somebody was keeping track of folks in those days.
There was the record of Anthony's ship, the Confidence.

Pleased to meet you, Grandpa Colby.

Ghosthunting

The cottage was of ancient stone, with thick lichen on its roof slates. Nobody answered our knock, so we wandered around the back by the stream taking notes of the plants, the smells, and the sound of birds. "You there!" a man's voice boomed. "What are you up to?"

I jumped, but Dee responded with dignity. "We're searching for ghosts."

There was more to it. "We're actually tracing the history of a unique mill stone that sat at this mill until it was taken to Utah over a hundred years ago. And we're using your mill for a setting in a book."


"I've heard of that stone," he said. "It came with William Penn's settlers to the Brandywine region centuries past. From England, I understand."

These were all clues for a client named Miller, anxious to find how many generations their family had been millers. Now we had them back to Pennsylvania and possibly to somewhere in England. Stepping into the setting opens doors.

Visiting a homeland with some props and dates catches the attention of local folks.
Here in Trzesniow, Poland, just asking how to pronounce a name at the cemetery brought people with that name out of the woodwork, anxious to join in and share their own ancestry.

We were invited to the mayor's home (the one in the middle) and he tore pages out of his own records to give to us. They were of major importance to the family we were researching, and we would never have found them otherwise. Plus, being in a home, seeing the furnishings, observing the food being cooked for dinner, added an authenticity to the setting in a way a book never could.

Writing history has taught me a lot about writing fiction. Setting is a major clue to character. In a history there are actual places to visit to soak in the ambiance. In fiction it's helpful to do a real-life tour anyway of the places you'll include, and use genuine elements in your writing.

Use the facts you already know. Your ghost grew up on a farm? When?

The style of farm makes a difference.

There are clues to a person's personality in the town where he grew up, in the places his parents worked, and the surroundings he explored as a child. Farms and businesses tell stories about the economic climate of the town, just observing them. The size and prominence of schools and churches reveal the formal education of a character, and whether that was a major concern in his life.

Were folks married in a tiny church or a cathedral?
Ask around.

Were your ghosts buried on the cliff behind the church? Are the graves in a family plot, with names and dates to follow up on? Is this the poor side of the cemetery or the ritzy part with monuments and benches? Those details become conclusions that add to your story.

Is he buried out in the sticks? Alone or in a family plot?
What did it mean in that community?

Time books or financial records tell more that just cash balances. They show organizational skills, educational background, and what things were important to your ghost (or character.)

These details are often found in a town library or family archive. Phone books are available, as well as local histories and community/church scrapbooks. Pictures and articles are easily photocopied by helpful librarians. (Don't crop the photos when you get home. Make sure the colorful wallpaper and the heavy old draperies are part of the setting.) Get out a notebook and describe in detail the cabbage cooking on the stove, and the boiled tongue they offered you for lunch—even the dog hairs on the chairs. It will add veracity to your story.

Ask the librarian—"Where was this home? In the middle of town, on the outskirts?" Find out how that indicated social standing. Drive out to see the property to get a feel. This is all part of the setting that helps fill in the blanks about your character. Ask to see the birth and death records, even if you already know the dates. The handwriting, the signatures of godparents, all the little details add to the feel and tone you'll be able to portray.

A town library will have archives of newspaper clippings. Were our ghosts at the fancy weddings? It will be listed. It might even say Mr. Robson and Miss Freeman became engaged at the reception afterward. They will be married June 3, 1846. Suddenly the story has new details!

It's important in non-fiction to describe the scenes accurately. Real people knew the humidity or the bone-chilling cold, the dry wind, or the lonely walk down to the sea. Pop into the local museum and see what they wore to go to the mines or the fishing boats. It shows respect to portray them in a setting they actually experienced. Fictional characters will come alive when they're placed in a realistic setting, too.

Dee loves to get a feel for the place he's describing. It brings his characters to life and he can relate to them knowing how and where they lived.

If this is a research trip, you'll have plenty to do without the usual tourist diversions. Some city tours might add to your understanding, but concentrate on what you're trying to accomplish. Mr. Miller had Dee draw up an itinerary and planned a trip to uncover details of their ancestors on a trip to England.

"Shrewsbury was so difficult to get to," he said after they got home. "We decided to visit Bath and tour the Cotswolds, see Stratford on Avon. I couldn't face sitting in a library for days! We'll send you over for the work part of the trip!"

We're totally game! We love detecting.

Read more of our ghost hunting adventures here.

Detective: Summit County, Utah

I married a detective. We're always looking for dead buildings,and the story of how they got that way. The cases are mysterious and the techniques are fascinating. For instance, there's a special kind of DNA to identify age: this broken-down old soul had personal, hand-made nails holding her together. (It's a little like having natural nails in an age of acrylic.)

At the autopsy, Dee modestly lifted up her floor boards, exposing private clues: old newspaper petticoats with dates like 1927. The tongue and groove herringbone boards, laid in specific patterns, were as time-specific as stocking seams.

He had to pronounce this old girl dead on the spot. Exposure, lack of fluids and no loving care had done her in. She collapsed right where she stood. Witnesses stood back and waited for help but she was old, gray and unbalanced. Her family run business dried up and blew away with the sheep industry, and she must have felt unnecessary like many folks do in old age. We paid our respects.

Dee attracts Ghosts and this week we're off to do some ghostbusting. Don't worry about me. I'll be with a history detective. I think of gathering history like gathering autumn leaves. We are finding the brightest examples of a former glory that beautified now barren places with life and growth. The people who created something from nothing, who raised huge families filled with hard working, inventive folks, while feeding vast numbers of citizens from the food they produced; these are the unsung heroes who built our country. Did they make any less of a contribution just because we don't know about them?

We've got our maps and our magnifying glasses and we'll bring home some news!

Ghost Hunt in Lund, Nevada

This is where we're going today.
We're meeting friends in Lund, a tiny town in western Nevada.

In 1991, Stephen King drove along US 50 as part of a cross country trip. He stopped at Ruth, a ghost town near Ely. Studying the abandoned city, King fantasized about the fate of the last residents. King then heard a local legend about how the ghosts of Chinese miners, who died while trapped in a cave-in, can be seen crossing Highway 50 to haunt the city of Ruth. King merged these details into his own story, including references to The Loneliest Road in America, which became the novel Desperation.

We're driving Highway 50 and searching for ghosts is our objective, too. Dee is a professional ghost-hunter. He hunts for skeletons in closets and in libraries, on microfilm, in archives, in letters and in people's memories. Usually he does enough homework before a project even starts to know where to start digging. On the way to our first excavation he introduces me to the main characters in our story. His animation is palpable, and I can already tell he's haunted by them.


Dee not only hunts for ghosts, he learns to love them, and weirdly enough they love him back. We can always tell. They lead him to clues and secrets that will flesh out their story. The most important part of Dee's work is writing down the things he learns in a book for their loved ones. The ancestor will then be known, appreciated, forgiven and understood through the experiences and circumstances Dee describes. It's exhilarating to bind families through stories.


There's sometimes a family member who planned on writing the history himself, but got lost in the graveyard of old newspaper clippings, and day-timer notes. Years have passed and there's still just a jumble of jottings filling boxes instead of a book. He's no closer to sharing his information with the family than he was when he started accumulating.

Dee helps dust him off, and listens to the frustrated disappointment of the would-be ghost buster. He's extremely understanding, recognizing the desire, and the difficulty in fitting the hard work around a real life. Even doing it full-time, with 25 years of experience, and a well-developed method to his madness, Dee knows the obstacles to uncovering a life-story. But he's very familiar with the steps to producing a book that can be shared in a set amount of time. He's a starter and a finisher, and an objective historian who knows what's valuable and what's trivial.

Unlike Stephen King, who can fill in blanks with fantasy, Dee must find and verify facts in a variety of places, using a number of skills. The well-intentioned Uncle Doug doesn't have the time to dig. Reluctantly he hands over the shovel and then becomes a great asset to the investigation. With his connections, Dee gets lists of places to hunt and people to interview.


For this history, a sister has already emerged in that role, full of helpful information and anxious to make the introductions to wary, older relatives. She has caught the vision of how history will make a difference in her family: descendants will feel guidance, empathy, comfort, understanding, and love in both directions as they become acquainted with their ancestors. Relationships in families are not affected by death.

On this trip to Lund, Dee will conduct several oral interviews with folks who actually knew our current ghost in real-life. These friends from many seasons of life, create a well-rounded picture and balanced personality. The ghost is emerging and ready to get acquainted.


This is when the relationship starts: Dee and the ghost begin bonding. I've said it many times—Dee's best friends (and most enthusiastic clientele) are all dead! But they're still real. Dee's joy is introducing great-grandchildren to ancestors, giving them a key to their past.

Matthew Heiss, archivist in the LDS church history department, recently said, "Without a history, we are like people with amnesia. When we have a record of our past, we have a memory."

So we'll be watching for ghosts as we travel the Loneliest Road in America. I'm excited to track down a few and hear what they have to say!


Get acquainted with a few of your own ghosts. You know the drill: Look at pictures of your grandma, visit your mom's high school, reminisce with your sister, drive by your childhood home, write a description of your dad when you were little, re-read your childhood diary and figure out who you were talking about.

Visit your Opa's office.

There are friendly ghosts on even the loneliest stretches of life.

Bohemian Omas

Wood Carvings from Krakow, Poland

I've got a few Polish, Czech and Austrian grandmothers
looking down on me with great anticipation.
After all, I'm telling their stories.

Archival Birth Register, Colmar

Dee is deep into researching and writing the history of a family with roots in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He's got Napoleon marching, an archduke assassinated, Nazis invading; economic upheaval and political intrigues. It's awesome stuff.

I'm in charge of the personal details. Who the people were inside their homes; what they worried about; how they lived day-to-day; why the babies all died, and how come there were several Stephanies in one family. And why a 20 year old girl would marry her 54 year-old uncle! You know, the real stories.

Details in the archives

My commuter is humming, printing out particulars on embroidery patterns of Polish folk costumes; Slovakian wooden church architecture; Advent, May Day, All Soul's Day, St. Barbara's Day, and the Dozynki Festival. I'm reading about 18th century recipes, and 17th century diseases, wax-painted Easter eggs, how to plant peas and how to brew ale. I'm enthralled by the trivial details of ordinary lives.

Battles, kingdoms and governments are important as the setting where the story takes place; the individual people are the characters. With interviews, scrapbooks, letters and memories that Dee has arranged and organized, our collaboration will produce the published history. Every time the process is overwhelming and thrilling.

Diane Setterfield wrote:

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some, there is an exception to this annihilation. For in books they continue to exist. We can rediscover them...

"As one tends the graves of the dead, so I read the books...I allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it? Does a pinprick of light appear...is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading about them? I do hope so."

---from The Thirteenth Tale

I love thinking of these Bohemian Omas, stretching back, back, back through the ages, yet all looking at their progeny with interest and concern, anxious to share experiences and insights. I'm so glad people have recorded memories of themselves or their ancestors to shed light on long-ago lives.

Cambridge, England

TravelinOma goal: Build a bridge between past and future generations.

Gathering History in Poland

Church in Trzesniow, Poland

We had to go back to the graveyard! We'd been kidnapped the day before, yet we still had to dig up information on some close acquaintances. It didn't matter that these folks have been dead for 150 years--Dee gets to know them so well they become his friends; it was important to find out anything we could.

Polish woodcarvings

Because the Przybyla family had shown such hospitality, we were certain we'd already passed the high point of our Polish research. Now we needed info on the Wojton names. Dates on the graves were too recent; we decided there must be an older cemetery in a nearby village, but we didn't have a clue of how to find directions. Stores were non-existent in the tiny town of Trzesniow.

One of many stork's nests, Poland

Three men were carrying a coffin into a small memorial chapel by the church. Not wanting to crash a funeral, we hovered around waiting to see if there would be someone we could talk to. We watched the men take the coffin in, and then carry it back out, set it down for a while, and then take it in again. Several minutes later they brought it out and put it on the ground. Smoking and chatting, they glanced over at us, so Dee approached to ask if any of them spoke English.

I stood by the car while they talked animatedly to each other, and then Dee went into the chapel with one of the men. I assumed they were looking at some documents or something because they were inside a long time. Dee came out with his new buddy, and stood by while the men gestured and spoke excitedly, and then they loaded the coffin into a minivan. Our main man called someone on his cell phone, and the other men drove off; then Dee followed his friend over to our car, and they both got in! (I know this sounds made-up, but it's true.)

I asked Dee what was going on and he wasn't sure. He thought they were construction workers since they were apparently showing him the craftsmanship of their new chapel. They were measuring the coffin to make sure it fit. Anyway, the guy was in the back seat, motioning for Dee to drive, tapping him on the shoulder and indicating where to turn. We thought maybe he was taking us to another cemetery, so we were surprised when we arrived at a large farmhouse.

Farmhouse in Trzesniow, Poland

Two women, one holding a baby and the other obviously her mother, were in the courtyard waiting for us. Their husbands pulled up on a tractor at the same time. Chickens, ducks, turkeys and a dog wandered around our car as the young mom greeted us. She was an English teacher visiting her parents, and she was going to be our translator.

English teacher, Mayor and Dee

Introductions were made and we found that our graveyard chum was actually the mayor of the town! His name was Tadesz Wojton (pronounced Vochick, I think.) Unbelievably, he had the same surname we were researching! Dee told Agate (the teacher) that we were searching for a library or an archive that might have a written history of the village, land records or other documents.

Government offices Trzesniow, Poland

Handing the baby to her husband, she ran inside for her jacket and she and the mayor got into our car. They directed us to a non-descript building on an unpaved road off the main street. Inside, up a flight of stairs, was a tiny library where the very helpful librarian searched for references to the Polish names. No luck.

Library stacks in Trzesniow, Poland.

The mayor suddenly remembered a book he had, "a segment which is in English." We drove to his home, where his wife pulled curlers out of her hair while he rifled through the bookcases. He reappeared with a spiral bound book about the history of the town, which his brother had written. It was all in Polish, unfortunately, with a section in the middle which the teacher dismissed as "unimportant and foreign." Dee looked at those pages and realized they were copies of documents from the mid 1800's, written in old German script, (which he can read.) They just happened to be references to the very people we were searching for, with dates, taxes paid, and property descriptions!

Page from Mayor's Book

Dee asked if we could take the book somewhere to copy the pages. Our translator friend explained the copy machine was in the next village, but after telling the mayor the significance of the pages, he tore them out of his book and gave them to us.

The mayor then showed us pictures of himself with some important Polish people and pointed to one on the wall of him at the Vatican meeting Pope John Paul II. His wife brought in photos of their 50th anniversary party, their niece who is an opera singer in Rome, a cousin who lives in Canada, and one of their son who died last year at age 27. It felt like we were friends.

Unbelievable things happen to us. Although we knew the approximate location of this Polish town, we couldn't find it on a map. We stumbled on it almost by accident, met the exact right people at the exact right time, and left with information we'd have never discovered on our own. I don't think our experiences are coincidences. I am convinced that people who lived long ago want their descendants to know their stories.

Graveyard in Galacia

We've made lots of friends in cemeteries!