Late one night I dreamed I was having a conversation with my great-grandmother about our ancestors. We were in the kitchen preparing to make bread and cinnamon rolls. I was just a boy 'in knickers', as she would have said. Grandma had just let me break up some cubes of yeast into her special little crockery bowl. While I licked the yeast crumbs from my fingers (it's an acquired taste!), she poured some warm, previously scalded milk into the bowl and set the mixture on the back of the stove where the heat from the warming oven would make it "work".
While she measured out the flour, I tried to explain to her how her given names "Mary Jane" (her nieces and nephews knew her as "Mollie") had come down to her from her father's mother's father's sister Mary Jane Davidson English, born in County Antrim, Ireland, and died in Warren Co., Ohio, on the fourteenth day of August in 1820. I embellished the tale with how her grandmother Jane Davidson (who married Henry Pitsenbarger) had had a twin sister named Mary Ellen Davidson (who married Henry's younger brother Jacob Pitsenbarger), how the twins had been born just four days before their aunt Mary Jane died, and how Mary Jane (Davidson) English's given names had been split to name the twins. The names were brought back together in naming her, my great-grandmother, Mary Jane Pittsenbarger.
In my dream Grandma didn't seem very excited about the information. This was very disturbing since it was my great-grandmother's passion for knowing her relatives that spawned my interest in the subject. While I watched her knead the dough, I remembered my mother telling me how my great grandmother used to quiz my 4-H leader about his family simply because his surname was Davidson. I couldn't understand her seeming disinterest now. When I asked her, in the dream, why she wasn't excited with the information about her distant relatives, she replied, "What difference does it make to me to know their names?" I didn't have an answer.
On that unsettling note, I half woke up, turned over, and drifted away into some other fantasy, with the yeasty "taste" of fresh-baked bread and butter in my mouth. But when I woke the next morning, the phrase "to know their names" was still with me. I realized my dream expressed my frustration at not being able to actually tell my great-grandmother (she died in 1972) about my discoveries and see for myself her reactions. I also began to wonder what my motivation really was in expending so much time and energy in my investigation into my ancestors.
Just before beginning the draft of my first attempt at a 'published' genealogy, I had occasion to write a letter outlining the ancestors of my cousin Elizabeth Follas. At the end of that letter I found myself apologizing for my interest in the history of my family by writing "Some people find genealogical research a morbid occupation, but I feel as if I am resurrecting long-forgotten family members who, at the very least, deserve our remembrance in gratitude for making us possible."
Weeks after my dream, I had finally come up with an answer to my great-grandmother's unsettling dream question. What difference does it make to know our ancestors? It helps us understand where we came from and what our being cost them. Our debt is great, and the least we can do to honor our ancestors is "To Know Their Names", a phrase which became the title of my first scribble.
Wally Garchow
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