Leave A Written Record For Others

I want to tell a personal story of my ancestors that clearly illustrates a couple of genealogical points.

My great-grandparents, Henry Joseph and Magdalena Regner, were both born in the German village of Alzey. He was born in 1845; she was born five years later.

Magdalena was 16 and all alone when she emigrated to America. Henry came over with his parents, grandmother and several younger siblings.

Family lore has it that they did not know one another in Alzey, but met and married in Columbia, Monroe County, Mo., in 1869.

Their first child, Gertrude, named for Magdalena’s mother, was born in 1870. Their next child, August, died in infancy.

The couple had seven children before my grandmother, Clara Anna, was born in 1894.

The family moved several times within Monroe County. They lived at Ivy Landing when Clara was born, but the spring-raging Mississippi River has since washed away that town.

In about 1900, the flooding Mississippi caused an outbreak of typhoid fever and claimed Clara’s next oldest sister and best playmate. To comfort her, family members in America and Alzey pooled their money to buy Clara a bisque-headed doll made in Germany.

Great-grandfather Henry died in 1917 from cancer of the stomach; Magdalena died in 1930. They lie together in Monroe County, overlooking the Mississippi River.

Clara loved her doll, and her two daughters nearly loved it to pieces. In fact, by the time she came to me, in 1973, she was in pieces; a doll-in-a-box. I had her restored and she now sits proudly in a child’s rocker in our home.

There are two points I’d like to make from this story. First, that a precious doll kept in a box might very well have ended up in the dump - and nearly did. If you have beloved treasures handed down one generation to another, make sure your family knows about and cares about them. Heirlooms packed safely away in boxes become tomorrow’s estate sale or antique shop fodder.

The second point to this story is that it only seems as if I know a great deal about these ancestors. Sure, I know where and when they were born, married and died. I have census and church records that tell of important dates. I have wonderful pictures of them. I’ve been to Monroe County.

But I don’t know anything about them as real people.

How hard was it for Magdalena to leave home, knowing she’d never see her mother again? I’m sure she sorely missed her mother when her first child was born, and then when her first son died. How did she cope with a hard life?

Did she attend the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904? Where did she get the strength to nurse a dying husband and then to live alone for a decade?

We have nothing written by Henry or Magdalena; no letters and no diaries. If only they’d kept a diary! If only! But in about two shakes, you, dear reader, will be the ancestor. Will your grandchildren say “If only she’d written something about her life!”

I hope you’ll begin today leaving some kind, any kind, of written record of your life for your family. They’ll thank you.

Come join EWGS members at their Summer Picnic In the Park! It’s from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Mission Park shelter. Bring a potluck item (main dish, salad, dessert) and utensils. Come have fun with your like-minded genealogy friends!