Family Line Voices Live When You Write

Fresh off of Mother’s Day and thoughts of my recently departed mom got my inspirational juices flowing a bit, once again, over my family line.  Mom left for Heaven last July, so this was our first Mother’s Day without her.  As might be expected we, the “remainers” were nostalgic.  You might keep holidays in mind as you begin to give voice to the stories growing on your family tree.

My efforts as a documenter of our family line (and one who writes about my family tree), by design, push further than the mere collection of names, dates, and places.  Yes, I do love the visual presentations of my family tree such as the nicely done pedigree charts and if you’re anything like me you definitely want those “roadmaps” to your family line too.   If you've not yet gotten to the point of publishing your family tree, I think you'll be surprised at just how much fun you'll have being able to look back into your family line that way.

In my humble opinion, though, those visuals of your family tree will be much enhanced by your ability to tell the stories of your ancestors that go along with that framed family line display on your wall.  It’s really so much more fun when you’re able to actually explore who your people were rather than just settling for faceless names.  Give them renewed voices and don’t simply accept ancestral silence.

Family Line Guardian

Meanwhile, though Audrey Arliss Bahl Boardman’s physical voice is now silent, the sound of her life’s work – her family and other people, especially children – continues to reverberate through the family line.  I’m just plugging in a set of speakers here so her family line story can be heard.

I was her firstborn and therefore had a ringside seat for the coming along of the next two family line birth siblings, the first adoptive sister and the final birth sister.  The five of us made up the little club I’ve dubbed “The Babysitters.”  Mom enlisted lots of assistance from this group as she and Dad proceeded to adopt their final four children.  Yep.  At completion our little family line unit had nine young members.

Audrey was a subscriber to the notion made famous by Edgar Guest that “It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home…”  And live she did – she, and we.

My mother had the world’s lowest pain threshold, a fact that I challenge anyone in our family line to disprove.  This severe aversion not only to pain, but really the experience of anything that even approached it, spilled over to her knee-jerk response any time she sensed anyone else’s hurt also.  It’s my conviction that this is the primary cause for her ending up with nine extensions to the family line.  If she got wind of a parentless, suffering child, she was very likely to want to adopt it.  I say all this to her credit.  As a mother, she was the best there ever was.

When you look up the word “fun-lover” in the dictionary, that’s her picture there illustrating it and oh, how, she loved to laugh!  I hope that hanging on some recent branch of your family tree you have someone like Audrey who could laugh at almost anything.  And speaking of the family line, I’m virtually certain Mom acquired this gift from her dad, Ralph Russell Bahl, whose family line bumped up against Lindbergh.  He was another Class A laugher and the best part of it with both of them was they could make you laugh too!

Tea Time

She loved the English “High Tea” and in her dream Victorian home she hosted many a tea party for family line members, friends and strangers, even occasionally using the house as a venue for fundraising efforts for her favorite children’s charities.

Mom was all about other people.  I’ve mentioned her love for children, but she was always looking for a way to make someone else feel good…child or adult, family line member or not.

There’s a little old Sunday School song that she pulled out of a hat a couple years ago, the lyrics of which really caught my attention.  She couldn’t remember the whole thing so I Googled it and found the chorus reads this way:

“Others, Lord, yes, others

Let this my motto be,

Help me to live for others,

That I may live like Thee.”

This really was her essence and you didn’t have to be around her for very long to catch it.  In fact, it was so much a part of her personality that even in her long cognitive decline “others” were in her mind.

I’m sure I’ll never forget for as long as I live one particular day.  Dad and I were working on some project down below the deck in their back yard.  By that time I was consistently keeping one ear open for what Mom was up to because from time to time, due to her Alzheimer's, what she was doing wasn’t totally safe. I heard the kitchen door open above us and then I heard a rattling and a chattering.

What a beautiful sound that will always be to remember:  the sound of my 79-year-old, Alzheimer’s-afflicted Mother doing what she knew best - serving.  Bringing coffee to two of her men.  Her palsied hands rattling the tray wasn’t going to stop her!  What a tremendous family line heritage she left to us.

The fact that I lived next door to the two most immediate members of my family tree for the last seven years of Audrey’s life was significant on many levels, not the least of which was that it afforded me the fun of seeing her excitement over our family line.  As I’ve said elsewhere, my Aunt C.K. was the real keeper of the family line until her death in 1992.  However, Mom was heavily instrumental in taking C.K.’s massive collection of information, letters and artifacts to the next level:  She got the family line writings out and read them – out loud to any family line within earshot!

The flame of my family tree passion was fanned as time after time Mom would pull out some letter from the Revolutionary, Civil or World War era written by an ancestor and say, “Look!  Look here, Brad!” and proceed to decipher the handwritten family line time capsule.  Incredible.

I won't soon forget the day I realized I was holding in my hand an actual letter (of course, hand-written) by my 4th great grandfather, The Honorable Roger Sherman, Founding Father, dated 1790.  The fact that I’m directly descended from this tower is cause for a whole other body of family line writing, but suffice it to say possessing his letter is truly a family line honor.  Thank you, Mom, for pointing me to it.

Obviously, when you sing the unsung of your family line, you’ll never encompass their full scope in a blog post.  I certainly don’t pretend to have done so here as I’ve pulled out a little of the Audrey Boardman family line for you, but I think you can see what I’m talking about when I suggest giving your family line members a voice.  They can't, but you can!



If you're interested in this business of honoring your family line by telling their stories, you may want to take a look at the following content:

Singing Your Ancestors

How To Take A Family Tree Odyssey 

Family Line Tribute


Illumine Your Family Tree