This column appeared in the winter 2013 issue of NCFR Report magazine.

Last Labor Day weekend, I spent some time with members of my family. I mean very old family members. I mean really old family members. I mean relatives who have been dead for decades! Ancestry.com, a leading genealogy website, had a free research week-end over Labor Day. They have the 1940 U.S. Census in searchable format now. (Not even census.gov has it available yet.) I have been interested in my family history for over 15 years but have not been able to devote very much time to it yet. In 1997, through a connection made with a third cousin in Stockholm, I visited Sweden to look up my roots. Don’t let the name “Gonzalez” fool you—that name was a wedding present. I am 100% Swedish American. More on this later.

Genealogy is a popular hobby, if reality TV is any indication. Two series this past year focused on family genealogy. On PBS, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., hosted “Finding Your Roots.” His investigators researched the family histories of public figures such as Sanjay Gupta, Martha Stewart, Condoleezza Rice, Samuel L. Jackson, Stephen Colbert and many more. You can watch these videos on the PBS website. Similarly, NBC just finished its third season of their genealogy program, “Who Do You Think You Are?” Celebrities including Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Rob Lowe, Reba McEntire and a whole star-studded list of subjects have had their family genealogy traced. Watch these online on the NBC website. In both series, I have found it impossible to tear myself away from these compelling stories. I don’t want to be a spoiler and ruin any of these episodes’ conclusions. What is universal, however, is how every person they researched had a “surprise” of some kind and how they all were intensely interested in the information. Some laughed. Some looked as if they were on the verge of tears. Clearly, for most, this new information had a meaningful effect on them. There’s a whole subset of human development research and theory on identity. How many of us could find some added meaning to our existence by finding out who our ancestors were?

My favorite ancestor was my great-great grandmother, Maria. She was born in 1841 in northern Sweden and lived most of her life there. She had three children: a son, Nels Alfred (my great grandfather), and two daughters, Katherine and Frieda. Frieda stayed in Sweden, but Nels Alfred and Katherine emigrated just after 1900. Their mother Maria came with them. She was in her 60s at the time. They settled in northern Minnesota. The most interesting thing about Maria is that nobody knows for sure who the father of her children was. In other words, I have a great-great grandfather somewhere who fathered Nels Alfred. Who was he? Why wasn’t he a part of their lives? This is where genealogy gets really fascinating. Sometimes you follow one lead and get nowhere. Then, sometimes, as it was for me, with a little circumstantial evidence you can make some educated guesses.

Great-great grandma Maria never married. This we know. According to the Swedish census about the time she was having babies around 1870, she listed her occupation as a domestic worker. My cousin researched the records for the father of all three children, and none was named. When I was in Sweden, my cousin and I visited this local parish, where the old birth records are maintained, and we talked to the minister. Swedish birth records are known to be remarkably complete. The minister confirmed this and told us that putative fathers were almost always listed, even if it was embarrassing information. We asked the minister why no father is listed for Maria’s three children. He got an interesting look on his face, as if he’d answered this question before —awkwardly. He said that in most of these cases, the father was the one keeping the records. In other words, the father was probably the parish minister at the time. Following that lead, we got the name of that minister and looked him up in the Swedish records. Maria was the domestic worker for that minister. He had no children and his wife was listed as an “invalid.”

Maria’s obituary from 1924 lists her as a “Mrs.” Obviously the “Mrs.” was either a social gift or she told people that she was married back in Sweden and people took her at her word. She died in a tragic way at age 82; she froze to death. She had bad eyesight and got lost during the night walking in subzero weather. The family legends about her have filtered down here and there. I was told that the father of all three children was the same person. I was told that the reason she emigrated as an older woman was that “the reason to stay there no longer existed.” (Did her partner die?) She lived in her own one room shack on her daughter Katherine’s property. I was told that she helped build that shack and that she wanted to live by herself. Who knows exactly what’s true?

What difference does it make? Not much. Nothing in my day-to-day life has changed. But I am proud that I’m the descendent of a strong woman. The few facts I have about her tell me a lot. Any unwed mother in rural Sweden circa 1870 had to be as tough as nails. Her “Scarlet Letter” no doubt left her with the hide of a rhinoceros. She emigrated late in life—she was willing to make a dramatic change. And she wanted her own space, enough so that she refused to live with her adult children.

Some pieces of family information matter to me while it may not matter to anyone else. My parents had twins, a boy and a girl, born prematurely 11 years before I was born. They only lived a day and were never named. My parents rarely spoke of them. The irony is that I found out about these siblings when the 1970 Census worker was sitting at the kitchen table with my parents. I was in the next room and overheard the conversation. I heard my mom tell the Census worker that they had two children who were dead—it was devastating to hear that accidentally. I asked my mother about them then, and occasionally thereafter, and she would only give one word answers—it clearly was not something she wanted to discuss. One thing she stressed to me multiple times, however, is that they had been baptized. A nurse baptized them immediately in the delivery room. This is the kind of information that is really interesting and it speaks to someone’s belief system. My mom thought it was more important that they were baptized than that they were named.

The U.S. Census from 1940 was just made public last April. Census records are sealed for 70 years to make sure that any family secrets are kept until most everyone in the household is dead. On Labor Day weekend, I used the free weekend membership to find out if another family legend was true. I was told that one of my grandfather’s sisters fled a horrible domestic violence situation. The 1940 Census had the answer, albeit via circumstantial evidence. In 1940 she had a married name, she was 24, and she had a 5-year-old daughter. They were both living with her father, the aforementioned Nels Alfred, my great grandfather, and no husband was with her in that domicile. I was delighted to see that I had another resilient woman in my past! At age 24, she had gathered enough strength to leave an abusive husband and take her daughter with her.

One piece of advice I would give younger genealogy enthusiasts is to “start early.” I began interviewing elderly relatives when I was in my early 30s. If I started now, it would be a lot harder—maybe impossible—to track down this much information. Genealogy archives are already established in public records all over the world and, with the internet, these are getting more accessible every day. If all you want are names and dates, there’s no hurry here. What is lost quickly are all the stories about what people were like or stories such as my siblings’ baptism. By the third generation, the oral history begins to fade fast. Write everything down. Take photos of people who are alive and photos of headstones if they aren’t.

Family genealogy research can tell us important medical information. Death certificates list the cause of death. Other health informa-tion may be something that you only suspect. Maria was visually impaired later in life. Did she have diabetes? It runs strongly in that branch of the family. There is almost no cancer in my family, but diabetes and alcoholism have touched each generation. Having a few years of health information can be use-ful. Since many diseases have a genetic basis, knowing one’s family history can help you be on guard for regular health screenings. It’s also interesting to read about one’s ancestors and note personality traits or areas of interest. One of my great-grandfathers was civic-minded; he hosted, in his home, the first meet-ing in which the little town of Strandquist, Minnesota, was incorporated. I love politics and civic engagement! Could this be why?

What I take from family research is not just “who they were,” but also, by inference, “what might I have the capacity to become?” Might I have inherited a distinctive trait from one of my ancestors? When I am facing one of life’s challenges, I often think about Maria. Might I have inherited some of her moxie? Maybe I can be like her. I can be strong. I can be independent. I can make changes in my life at any age. After all, I’ve got at least 170 years of life experience.

Epilogue

How can you find out whether you are susceptible to the genealogy bug? Here’s a free test. Go to findagrave.com . Enter information about a family member—or even a deceased celebrity—into the search engine. Did you find something interesting? Do you want to know more? If so, congratulations! You have a new hobby! I would love to hear your stories about the surprises you find.