A Passion for Family History

Rachel Hayward

Native Roots and Family Stories Inspire Rachel Hayward's Passion to Uncover her Family History and to use her Writing Talents to Record What She has Been Told, and What She Will Find...

I have a passion for family history. It started with my visits to both set of grandparents in Astoria as a child, experiencing large family meals around round tables, stories flying, jokes and belly laughs so long and deep we were sore the next day. We shared and passed along family heirlooms, identified pictures, and then heard more stories. Those memories are still thick in my blood, and I still dream about the roads leading up to those homes, certain rooms, certain objects, smells.

I want to know more about my family and where they come from. I want to know where my brother gets his chin, and why I have the same grit and perseverance as my great grandfather. I want to know how I am related to the Chinook Indian Nation, and why so many of our lines lead back to Ireland. I want to know if we truly are related to Betsy Ross as family rumors tell, and if our Rubens line truly links back to the man who created the Rubenesque style of paining. I want to know who I am, this culmination of generations of ancestors.

Not long ago, I started researching….going through boxes of pictures with my parents and grandparents to identify them, attending family reunions, taking genealogy classes, putting together a family newsletter—doing all I could to get our ancestors’ stories. Finding details and the far-reaching family lines jazzes me. I get so geeky excited when a puzzle piece falls into place and I’m lead to another person or generation.

What I have found to be even more important are the stories. Not only do I know names, dates, and places, I also know snippets about who these people were and how they lived. My great grandfather, a very able fisherman who had a large piece of land in Astoria, died from sepsis because he stabbed his finger with a fishing hook. Chief Comcomly of the Chinook people greeted Lewis and Clark at the mouth of the Columbia, and I am a descendant of him and one of his nine wives. My grandmother made a famous recipe - Tamale Pie -  based on what was in her head, and the recipe was recorded on paper only a few years ago. I learned how to make gillnets from my grandfather, holding the wooden needles made from apple wood, and hearing my mother tell me one of her jobs was filling those needles for granny. On a recent trip to Fort Stevens, my mother shared a story about sneaking out at night to go swimming in large tanks of water on the military base, only to discover right then that they were cable testing tanks for the underwater mines placed in the Columbia to ward off enemy ships during World War I. My grandmother, whose parents came from Norway, mentioned a special gift of sight that all the women in her line had had, yet elaborated no further. An entire culture just two generations out, cloaked in mist, never understood, never spoken of, lost.

I live close to the land and nature and have a healthy respect and reverence for the earth and for life. I get that from my ancestors. I have grit and ingenuity and creativity, and I use those in tough times, just like most of my family did in days past. I live simply, with sparks of “holy cow!” thrown in at random. Mealtimes are times of gathering, warmth, food, stories, laughter, and discussion, reminding me of those dinners at Grandma’s house around the round table.

Thing is, passing these stories along is important. How else will my children understand who came before them? How else will they know how their ancestors moved, what choices they made and what mistakes they can learn from? Understanding those who came before us allows us to understand who we are. And who we’re not. It gives rise to memory, history, experience. It gives us a place in the flow of things.

Stories give an accounting. They are witnessed, heard, sung, retold, written. Stories are living things - beings that traverse time and space, whispering teachings and guidance, inspiring, validating, commiserating, communing. They can be ugly, bent, spitting at you with vile words and feelings. But worse than that, the story that is extinguished by the untelling is the greatest tragedy. So much is lost.

That is why I do this work. To make known our stories so that they may live and be told.

Excerpt from Rachel's writings:

Warmed with robe and slippers, the marble doorknob is cold to the touch. It too creaks, and I wonder just how old things are here. The bed creaks, the floor creaks, the door creaks, the dresser creaks…it’s like the language old things speak. I slip down the narrow stairs, lined with a flowered runner, and open the door to the hall that leads into the kitchen.

I am met with a barrage of comfort: grandma at the stove managing pancakes, eggs, bacon, biscuits, ham, giving me a big smile and a tea cup with my wished-for coffee; grandpa’s clocks all tick-tocking, and at each quarter hour, chiming or cuckooing; the hum of conversation in the other room where grandpa, uncles, aunts, cousins, and parents are already awake, chatting and reading newspapers.