You have selected:

October 27. 2005
Exploring Unknown Territory
by - June Hart Solntseff

When the great explorers went travelling in their little ships, they took with them map makers, or cartographers.  Their maps showed huge expanses of the world which they labelled Terra Incognita, and they warned, “Here There Be Monsters”.  They accompanied these warnings with drawings of fantastical creatures, breathing smoke and flames, the products of their imagination; I call them guesstimates.

When Genealogists venture into the past they often forget that monsters may lie in wait for them. Searching for the way back to one’s ancestors can be hazardous if we make presumptions based on little or no proof, delicious though the temptation may be. 

Guesstimates can be fun for a little side-excursion into uncharted waters, but we can end up in the Doldrums if we forget proven facts. It is unproductive, and unfair to friendly helpers, to waste time in a search for a spurious link, just because we think there is one.  Here there be monsters!

I ventured into the unknown as a last resort, and actually found a monster!  We discovered that my great-grandfather Henry HART had committed suicide in 1881 by hanging.  None of the family knew anything about it.  We obtained a copy of his death certificate mentioning suicide, and a newspaper report which actually said he had hanged himself from the “cornice of his bed”.  A cornice is a decorative moulding in the corner of a room or building, usually made of plaster.  We could not conceive of anyone hanging from a plaster cornice without destroying it, and thus failing in his attempt to destroy himself. 

There it was in black-and white. We had “hard proof”. And then there’s human error.  Who can guess at the distance of 125 years what the reporter knew about architectural terms?

Henry’s widow, Frances/Fanny, vanished.  We guessed it was because of the prevailing moral climate which made something shameful of suicide.  We spent years looking for her.  Perhaps she had taken refuge with a son or daughter, perhaps she had left the country, had she died? - all those guesstimates!  To add to the confusion, her name Frances was interchangeable with Francis, which meant we also had to look for a man.

I had collected several pieces of conflicting information which suggested Fanny’s whereabouts, but no proof, so she had languished  in my “Back Burner” file waiting for the last puzzle-piece to fall into place. 

And then one day a few months ago I found her by accident!  I was idly surfing the Ellis Island manifests and found her son’s arrival in New York with his family in 1909.  In the column that asked for name and address of nearest relative was his mother, Mrs. Frances Hart, followed by her address!  Right out of the blue!

What has this to do with the early explorers?  If they had guessed at probabilities, we would still be looking at maps with imaginary monsters.  They were patient, and they went exploring, investigating everything until they could prove its existence. And only then did they complete their maps. Genealogy should be based on proven information, no matter how long it takes to obtain that proof.