Since my last post on this site was 363 days ago and I’m feeling a bit bad about that, I want to post at least something to break my writer’s block streak today before a whole year has gone by.
History: Not holding any info back!
First, I have not made any truly groundbreaking discoveries about new ancestors through historical records. But then, I’ve not really been actively working on that, either–part of the reason I’ve not posted.
Science: Intriguing but hard-to-pin-down relatives discovered via DNA
Since I got the results from the Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) test a few years ago, others who have used their service have turned up as a distant cousin. However, in none of those cases have we been able to figure out the relationship via historical records. Most recently, just a few weeks ago, a close match (perhaps a 2nd or 3rd cousin) contacted me, who has ancestors in the Molotschna settlement in Ukraine, but we are still working on who our common relative might be. The surnames Wiens and Dueck have floated to the top so far.
Metaphysics: Dream visitations from forebears
My reply this evening to my first cousin Orris in the “Where do you fit in the family tree” post that is stuck to the top of the blog about visitations makes me wonder if any other readers here experience those. On quite a regular basis in my dreams, some or all of the nuclear family I grew up in are visiting together, sometimes in what kinda-sorta seems to be the house I lived in from age 7-18, sometimes on a trip to an unrecognizable destination, but we’re all traveling together–in many of these although not all, my Dad, who died in 2011, is still with us.
A couple years ago, I had such a vivid dream of my namesake, Oma Mary Janzen, that I posted about it on my Facebook page, saying, “During a Sat. a.m. sleep-in dream, our family was just going to start having a party and attendees included my Mom, my siblings, my late Dad (who was taking a nap in a side bedroom–I had to go in there at some point, woke him up, and apologized), and Dad’s mom, Oma Mary, vibrant and standing tall as she looked at about age 60 in a pretty blue print dress (not diminished how I last saw her in the nursing home at age 89 in 1994), and I was so happily surprised and said, ‘Oma! It’s so nice to see you!'”
What, if anything, do such visitations have to tell us? (Other than that we really miss our lost loved ones.)
Culture: Grandmother hats?!
Last summer, I visited my sister and brother-in-law and they took me to see Mennonite heritage hot spots in southern Manitoba, Canada including a reproduction village as it might have appeared in Ukraine a century ago. A couple months later, my much more genealogically-savvy second cousin did much the same, then afterwards she made a reference to our foremothers donning a “grandmother hat” at some undefined life stage. Evidently this was akin to what my great-great grandmother Susanna Mathies is wearing in the picture I have of her. I had never heard of a grandmother hat before, and would love to learn more about this custom for women “of a certain age.”
family janzen 