Looking back at the struggles of ancestors

When I was 16, my father would wait up for me on Saturday nights to make sure I made it home safe for my midnight curfew. A few dozen miles around Charlotte was as far as I was allowed to venture out alone into the world in the family station wagon.

When he was 16, my great, great grandfather Johan boarded the ship Stadt Atwerp with his brothers and struck out for America, leaving Prussia and his family behind. It was 1846, so there was no way to call home for help if he had a problem. Given that he came from a family of laborers, he probably had little more than the clothes on his back, with only a vague idea of how he’d make a living. He no doubt understood that he would ultimately have to rely on himself for survival in a country whose language he didn’t speak.

At 16, my great grandmother Sarah Genevieve Marsden, an orphan from the time she was five, worked full time in a mill in Utica, N.Y., to support herself. The census of 1900 lists her as a boarder in a house she roomed in with two of her siblings.

Her mother, my great, great grandmother Sarah Ashcroft Marsden, arrived here in the late 1800s from Lancashire, England, to escape poverty and the persecution of Catholics. At my age, she died in childbirth, leaving behind nine children. According to an article in the July 1888 Utica Daily Press, Marsden’s 15-year-old eldest daughter took over the household and the raising of the children after her mother’s death. Two years later, my great, great grandfather William, a respected member of the community according to the article, died in a bloody mining accident, leaving my great grandmother and her siblings orphaned, homeless and penniless. They were taken in by a variety of families. My great grandmother Sarah Genevieve landed in the household of a drunkard and his wife. As a child, it was her job to walk to the bar each evening and persuade him to come home. She was one of the lucky ones. Other siblings died of tuberculosis, went insane and one was even kidnapped and taken to another city to beg for money on the streets.

Sarah Genevieve, like so many in my family tree who have faced adversity, eventually landed on her feet and went on to marry and have eight kids of her own who turned out great.

Most Saturday afternoons, I write this column beat-down tired from the week that was. That comes with the territory when you have a full-time job, a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old.

When I first became a parent, I marveled at the round-the-clock effort it takes to care for children. Doing it right requires allowing them to directly or indirectly monopolize nearly every waking moment of your life, which will never fully be yours again.

I now look back on the generations of people who did this for me with a new sense of appreciation. Given what it took in the past just to survive and push new lives forward into the next generation, I began to wonder about my ancestors.

Six months ago, I’m ashamed to say, I couldn’t have told you the full names of any of my great-grandparents off the top of my head. After awhile, that really ate at me. It just seemed callous and horribly disrespectful somehow.

So I began obsessively asking questions, typing in names and dates on Ancestry.com and digging through census and old family records. My search has taken me back to the 1500s and put me in touch with family I didn’t know I had on three continents. On more than one occasion, as the realities of my ancestors’ pasts came into focus, I’ve sat before the computer screen with tears running down my face.

I’ve come to understand that I am part of a survival story that is much bigger than me, and that the sum total of what it took others to get me here to this moment weighs heavily on my shoulders and on those of my children. It’s a legacy I’m proud to carry on.

This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2011.