Walton: Climbing family tree and branching out

For most of my life I was content to know only the bare bones — forgive the bad play on words — of my family history. I knew the life stories of my grandparents and great-grandparents but that was about it. Like many of us, I had neither the time nor inclination to invest the effort required to reach further back and learn everything I could about those who came before me. But retirement brought a challenge, a need to find something constructive and useful to fill the hours that once were consumed by newspaper deadlines. Jigsaw puzzles had no appeal to me at all. A friend mentioned how rewarding it had become to research his own family's history — a puzzle of a different sort — and suggested I consider it. For an old reporter who once enjoyed the thrill of the hunt in tracking down a good story, it suddenly mattered a great deal to me to know when my forebears came to America and what stories their own ancestors could tell. I sent a saliva sample to a genealogical research outfit and basically confirmed what I already knew, that the Walton name was common in England and the Ballreich name, my mother's, was common in Germany. Advertisement Beyond that, I knew nothing. It was time to get to work. I found websites ready to help me out, for a fee of course. One is Ancestry.com, the other is MyHeritage.com. I chose the latter, although they both perform the same functions and look a lot alike. A free version is available but the help is limited. I quickly discovered that the version requiring an annual fee was well worth it. It's like the sun came out, the fog of time began to clear, and doors which had been closed for generations began to slowly creak open. Culling information from public records on both sides of the Atlantic and sharing the research of countless others curious about their family history, the website set me on a path that has been enlightening and fascinating. So far their digging and mine has carried me back 11 generations to the mid-1500s on my mother's side. The trail is a little murkier on my dad's side. I'm only back to the mid-1700s, just ahead of the American Revolution. A lot more digging remains because I cannot attest that everything lines up correctly. Inconsistencies are fairly common when genealogical research is done by amateurs like myself, even with professional help. Tracking down a piece of information in two different family trees, I ended up showing a son who was born several years before his own father. Part of the problem, of course, is that much of the research and most of the family trees have been compiled over the years by other novice genealogical sleuths like myself. Advertisement Their errors become mine. Public records are a great resource, although careless penmanship in the long-ago era of quill pens and fountain pens employed with a flourish is a frequent problem. Once a spelling mistake is made, whether by a keeper of public records a century ago or by earnest contemporaries of mine assembling their own family trees, it is often passed along inadvertently to subsequent generations. I have seen my mother's maiden name spelled three different ways within the span of four generations. There's a chance that was intentional but I doubt it. It's so easy to accept someone else's mistake as fact and perpetuate it. Regardless, I am grateful for their efforts. Something I didn't expect in my research was how common it was for a child to be given the same name as the parent. For boys, of course, Robert Sr. and Robert Jr. are common still today. But I've discovered it was not uncommon for girls as well way back in the day. I found a Wilhelmina who gave the same first name to her daughter. It has been exciting to discover which of my ancestors were the first to leave Germany or England behind and cross the ocean to a new life in a new land. For the record, it was either my great grandfather Michael and great grandmother Lisette, who were born in Germany and died in Tiffin, or my other maternal great-grandparents, August and Wilhelmina, who were born in Germany and died in Fostoria. The year they came to America is undetermined for now but I'm still looking. My genealogical research has been a fun hobby but the time has come to take it more seriously. Every new discovery is a revelation that I treasure because it introduces me to an ancestor I've never seen and, until now, a voice I've never heard. 'Keep looking,' they seem to be whispering through the mist of time. 'You're getting closer.' Eventually I hope to nail down the real prize. My paternal grandfather was named George Washington Walton and there are other George Waltons in our family history, including one of my brothers. Is the George Walton who signed the Declaration of Independence hiding in plain sight somewhere in my family tree? Mr. Walton is the retired editor and vice president of The Blade. Contact him at twalton@theblade.com.