Third Times the Charm

You never know who is reading your blog. And how far they’ll come to make contact.

Above is me, my mom, and my third cousin once removed. She began following this blog when I wrote about my maternal grandfather Francis William Schryer (in Jan of 2008). He is a family member we have in common through Fran’s maternal grandmother Emeline Wright.  This cousin followed me through several posts, including one in which I noted that I changed my name to my mother’s maiden name in college. She finally hit paydirt when I referred to my Web design business which has contact information on it and wrote me asking, “Are you Francis Schryer’s granddaughter?”

Francis Schryer died when my mother was 15 and my grandmother remarried long before I was born to a man named Jack Hess. Jack is the man I always knew as Grandpa and he never shirked his grandfatherly responsibilities or treated us as less than his own grandchildren – he knew all us cousins from the day we were born. He is in his last years now, suffering from Alzheimer’s, and I have extremely fond memories of him.

But hiding behind the title of “Grandpa” in my life was the specter of Francis William Schryer. I grew up hearing painful stories of the chasm his death left in the family and listening at our regular family gatherings to my mother’s brothers tell their stories – about the remarkably harmonious marriage Fran had with my grandmother. The rhythms of the family’s life in Hillsdale in the 50’s. The days surrounding Fran’s aneurisms and finally his death at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. That night the family minister came back to the kitchen where my mother and great-grandmother were playing Canasta and my great-grandmother asked, “Well, how is Fran?” The minister said, “Not so good, he died about three hours ago.” And in that moment my mother stopped believing in God. She never changed her mind.

When I chose to change my name I knew I wanted to get closer to my mother’s family and his ghost played a part in my embracing the name Schryer and my interest in the Schryer family history. Fran’s family. My family.

“Are you Francis Schryer’s granddaughter?” Despite his shadow over my family, she is the first person to ever ask me this question. I am unquestionably, determindely and joyfully  my grandmother’s granddaughter, but only a phantom relation of his. Yes, I could finally tell someone, Yes, I am Francis Schryer’s granddaughter.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting this third cousin once removed today at a restaurant she chose for it’s Weight Watcher’s-friendly menu (yeah, she reads the blog). She was driving through the general vicinity from Toronto on her way to Chicago and stopped to have a leisurely lunch with me and my mom and exchange family stories.

She is a very, very, very serious genealogist. She gave me and my mother binders of family history information. She’s organized the way you’re supposed to be – CAREFULLY AND WITH FULL DOCUMENTATION. Her notes are impeccable. She has photocopies of census, death and other records in neat, tidy groupings. She has little red dots next to pertinent information so you don’t have to slog through ancient, hand-written documents. She has carefully labeled photographs. She has family groupings that put mine to shame. She has it seriously down. I found myself apologizing for the family history I haven’t even written yet. “Mine’s not like this,” I said. “Yours is a narrative, dear,” my mother said patting my back. The three of us talked until a “narrative” was a very good thing to be writing (and it is, it is).

We had a good time and it was wonderful to meet someone whose knowledge of the family meets ours exactly (she knows one side, we know the other, with just one generation of overlap) but her references to her every-day knowledge of Canada terrified me into remembering how much I haven’t learned yet about Canadian history. The sciatica put an end to family history work for a few months as my recreational sitting came to a grinding halt but now that I’m back to it I need to start in with a few works (in English!) on the relationship between the English and French Canadians in Quebec and the Ottawa River Valley in the early 19th century. Suggestions welcome!