Family Roots

Partial Thurston family tree

Hello? Anyone still around? Sorry for the dust-bunnies and tumbleweeds floating collecting on the floors. I've been a little...busy.

Busy, you say? Work, motherhood, cleaning house, Christmas shopping, birthday party planning...that's probably enough to keep anyone busy this time of year.

But me? No, that wasn't enough. No, I had to go and loose myself in a new and time-consuming hobby. Remember how I told you about how I get a little "obsessed" at times? Yeah. I've found a new one. And we haven't even had G's big birthday party yet. Hmmmm... attention deficit much?

What was I saying? Oh, yes! My new hobby. I've fallen into the rabbit hole of geneology. I've always been interested in all things historical. History was my absolute favorite thing in school. A few months ago I acquired a book all about the history of Broome County, my hometown. I devoured it. I love trying to figure out where everything was/is located, what's there now. I relish reading all the details and secrets of long dead people's lives and the impact they had on my community. I frequently walk or drive past quiet neighborhoods lined with old, fading houses and wonder whose homes they were and what their stories are. But somehow the intrigue of geneology study had escaped me. Until last week.

Last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I was at work, bored out of my mind. It was deathly quiet. Phones weren't ringing. Faxes weren't humming. Nobody seemed to need anything. My supervisor actually came into my office and said, "If you have Christmas shopping to do online, help yourself." That would have been a productive use of time. That Christmas list is collecting dust and I haven't done much about it. However, I had already been occupying myself online and by that point, I was long gone. Let me try to explain how I arrived at
Ancestory.com

This is vintage Kami. I don't know how you all surf when you have nothing else to do, but I tend to jump from topic and link to link as things pique my interest. So, I believe I began on The New York Times site, looking at the news. An article on the history of "Jewishness" caught my eye (the history thing, I guess, I'm not jewish.) From there I began researching an obsure Turkish empire in the Middle Ages called the Khazars. This led me to a very interesting article on the Samaritan people. On that blog site I stumbled upon an article about the history of a woman's husband's last name. Aaaaaaand, we've made it. She linked to Ancestory.com. I hopped over and was immediately absorbed in the surname message boards.

Arthur Thurston and his draft horses, circa 1925

By the end of the day I had done some significant research on my mom's father's family, the Creerys. I worked my way back several generations to an infamous guy named "Cherry Tree" Joe McCreery in Western PA. Apparently he was a friend of Johnny Appleseed and a real-life Paul Bunyan. I also solved the mystery of when and how McCreery was shortened to Creery. Turns out "Cherry Tree" Joe's son, Morgan Rheese Banks McCreery, was a dentist. When he moved to a new town and set up a new practice, the man hired to paint the office door mistakenly painted "Creery" rather than "McCreery." I guess it was easier to change his name than change the door. (Credit for that story belongs to my mother's cousin Clark Creery, who I stumbled onto online.) I was HOOKED!

I printed out a bunch of information and when I stopped by my parents' house to pick up Giuliana I ended up showing it all to my mom and pestering her to fill in some of the blanks. She didn't have all the answers, but she said she'd try to remember what she could and would dig up some pictures, too. We ended up spending all day at it on Friday.

I went home and set up shop in a corner of my kitchen with my laptop on the counter, and I remained there for the next 5 hours, lost on Ancestory, digging up whatever I could find on both of my parents' families. I came across some pictures of my father's parents when they were quite young and had no idea who had posted them or how they were related to me. I sent the woman a message and it turns out she is my father's cousin's daughter (second cousin? I never remember these things.) She and I have been corresponding ever since and she has sent me 40+ family photos and filled in many missing pieces about my father's family that even he didn't know. Turns out my family on his side has lived in Broome County almost since it was founded 1806. I had no idea. All of the sudden that fascinating book on the history of Broome County took on an entirely new meaning to me. This is not only the history of the area I live and love, it's my family's history. They were here and were apart of all of it. How incredibly cool is that?

Bessie Jones Thurston and Arthur Thurston and family circa 1922

Now that I've filled in most of the names several generations back, I've been focusing on my dad's family and the places they lived and worked. I've been driving around town, taking pictures of old houses that are still standing and empty fields where they used to be. I have a lot more work to do. John and I are off the week after Christmas and I have plans to spend a day at the Broome County library's geneology center. I hope to find birth, marriage and death records. I plan to dig up whatever I can find about my great-grandfather's company, Binghamton Warehouse & Terminal and the grocery store he owned later. I will look up deeds and census data so I can explore all the addresses and homesteads. (Might need more than one day!)

245 Clinton St. Binghamton, (one of) my great-grandparents' home

I suppose I'll have to squeeze a birthday party for a certain two year old and oh, yeah, Christmas in there somewhere this month. But for now I'm far gone and preoccupied (obsessed?) with my new hobby. Pass that deed book over here, would you?