Surprising Adventures

Landis Ave., Vineland, New Jersey. Pinterest Image. Posted by Trudy Getler in Old Vineland Album. Unknown Original Source.

 There is not much in my genealogical adventures that surprises me:
Family lived in the the South? Yep, slaveholders. No surprise.
Civil War soldiers? Yep, Confederates. Shocker.

Do you know what does surprise me? Let me give you some background about my life first before I tell you. 

William and Mary (Brocato) Prestis Sr. Original Photo. Private Collection 1958.

I was born in South New Jersey. My father was from New Jersey, his family lived in New Jersey and they were all immigrants from Austria-Hungary-Slovakia. 
My mom was born in Central Mississippi. Her mom's family were all born and raised in the southern states with her father's family immigrating from Sicily. 

I have two older siblings, 11 years and 12 years older than I am so when my sister was graduating high school, I was about to head into kindergarten. When my brother graduated high school, I was in 2nd grade. You could pretty much say I was raised similarly to what an only child would have been like.

The school my sister and brother attended was large.  A matter of fact, it was so large that one of them went to school in the morning, one went to school in the afternoon so that the school could accommodate all the students in the area. It was also fairly violent in nature. 

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With a new child coming through and having experienced the growth and violence in the big city, my parents were looking for a more intimate school experience where they could then raise me without fear and worry like they had with my older siblings. Understandably so. They had already been through that twice. Did they really want 13 more years of that environment? 

So off to Northwest Pennsylvania we moved. In the forest, in the middle of no where we lived on a rural farm with all sorts of wildlife and animals around us. I grew up very differently than my siblings did. They don't seem to mind the big city life while I would much rather sit quietly on a stump in the woods alone in my thoughts.  As an adult, I stayed near the area, never really straying far. ​

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When my parents retired they sold their whole lot in life and decided to tour the country to visit all the places they never got to see.  When my father passed away, my mom removed to Florida, where they had always spent all those retirement winters.  She was not well and refused to move back to Pennsylvania. I felt a sudden draw to move away. I uprooted children and moved to this town I am currently in, where shortly after my mother joined us. Which brings me to the surprises.

The realization that you moved to a place where you had ancestors living and walking where you are now walking, is often overwhelming. I had no idea I had ancestors near here. I never knew many of them before moving here.  The more research I did, the more I found they lived three counties away, in the next county, in this county, in the next town over, in MY town...... Right here, just steps where I am sitting from. 

It was almost as if somehow I was guided here for a reason. My ancestors are surprising me regularly with their involvement in the formation of the state of Alabama and the towns here. They were lawyers, and doctors, and soldiers. They married here and they raised families here. Sometimes they even moved on from living in the area to further away places, like Mississippi and Texas. 

These little surprises are what keeps me involved in this on a daily basis. I know a great deal about my ancestors but the more I learn, the more I realized how much MORE there is to know. 

Enjoy your own surprise Adventures In Genealogy!
#52ancestors