It’s the stories that matter to Zelienople genealogist group
ZELIENOPLE — One by one, Bill Wittey unpacked documents Monday, March 23, from a box he has kept in his Lancaster Township home onto a table at the Zelienople Area Public Library. At each name included on the document, he shared an anecdote.
One was a military discharge paper for one of his relatives, Albert Mason, who served in the British military during World War I and was discharged in 1917 after being injured by a bomb.
Wittey only knew Mason through his own grandfather, but recalled the injury from the bomb left him blinded, but not as a direct result of the explosion.
“He was in a tank, a bomb went off and when he got out … they put the wrong medicine in his eyes, so he was blind,” Wittey said. “He could drive in a car. He could feel the road and he would walk out and he could tell you was the sun shining or whatever, and he counted his steps. The only thing is, if a kid kicked a footstool in the way he wouldn't know about it.”
Having people tell stories such as these from their own perspective is the goal of Sue Ennis, who heads a monthly genealogy workshop at the Zelienople library.
Ennis, a retired teacher, encourages people to bring any documents they have to the monthly workshop because she can help them glean information from them, but simply having names and dates can lead a person to recall a memory they didn’t know they retained.
Family documents and personal memories can help a person learn more about where they came from, Ennis said. Wittey learned that he has more British heritage than he knew of through the workshop.
“He came with a small box and opened it and each piece led to a story,” Ennis said of Wittey, whom she knows personally because he is the father of one of her childhood friends. “This is a military discharge and you had a story that made him come alive for us. That's awesome.”
Wittey’s little box of documents became the focus of the genealogy workshop on March 23, which Ennis said happens when an attendee brings a particularly interesting find to a meeting. Before Wittey started unpacking his box, Ennis gave a presentation about handling and deciphering information from old photos and documents, which she said are useful in learning more personal stories about one’s ancestors.
At previous workshops, Ennis has demonstrated the use of online databases, such as Ancestry.com, and she has also showed people how to find government documents on municipal, state and federal websites.
Her interest in genealogy stems from her childhood, when she moved from New Jersey to Zelienople, where her last name, “Ennis,” was questioned by her classmates. They were more used to surnames with Polish and Italian backgrounds, she said. She dug into her family history through her parents and found that she is mainly Welsh with Irish, Scottish and English in the mix.
Ennis said DNA tests can shed light on a person’s literal background, but it’s the stories of family that she’s really after. She encourages people to learn about the people in their lineage rather than just finding out their DNA distribution.
“You're connected to the land, to the community, community service and organizations, but when you don't know what that connection is, you have to know how to find it,” Ennis said.
About a dozen people attended the March genealogy workshop, which was pretty typical for attendance, according to Ennis. Some of them are avid genealogists in their own right, having researched their families online or done DNA tests.
Ron Morton, of Lancaster Township, has written books about his family based on research he has done and even used an artificial intelligence program to create a map routing his early ancestors’ trek around the years 1706 to 1774.
Morton said online resources like Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker, a genealogy research software program, have helped him research his family and compile his findings into digestible stories and books. On March 23, he brought a photograph of one of his maternal great-grandfathers
According to Morton, learning more about ancestry is a challenge of time more than anything.
“It has been fun, but it's a time suck,” Morton said.
Debbie Billeter, of Cranberry Township, has also looked into her family background, mainly through DNA. She said she comes from a German background, so a lot of her research has been looking into German sources.
“I found out how to do some German research,” Billeter said.
Ennis said learning how to search government databases for documents like land and property transfers, marriage licenses, military papers and births can give a person a lot of information on where their ancestors lived and who they knew and were related to. She also said newspapers have documented many significant events throughout the years and reading articles can literally tell stories about a person’s ancestors.
But people don’t need to dig too deep to learn about their own families. Ennis said people should talk to older family members as much as possible and gather any old photos or papers they have to save for future generations. She said even getting your hands on a Polaroid from the 1980s can lead a person down an ancestry rabbit hole.
“The best advice I was given was start with what you know,” Ennis said. “We all know more than what we remember, if you sit around with family and start chit-chatting.”
Ennis encouraged Wittey to pass his box of knowledge down to his children and grandchildren. He was born in 1936, he said, so some of the contents in the box weren’t much older than him.
Wittey would later share another story of his “Uncle Les,” whose name came up when he showed Ennis and the group a family tree his family had constructed.
The mention of his name led Wittey to another memory with a story that shone some light on life in the 1920s.
“He invented a fuel-less motor … he had this fuel-less motor and went to Germany and said, ‘If I can't sell it, I'll take the secret to the grave,’” Wittey said of his uncle Les. “The oil companies paid him $20,000 in the 1920s to forget about it, so he didn't sell it.”
The genealogy workshops take place at 10:30 a.m. on the fourth Monday of each month at the Zelieonple Area Public Library, 227 South High Street, Zelienople.
