Past Perfect
It’s funny. There’s an expression in grammar that always mirrors genealogy for me: past perfect. It represents the sum total of the many imperfections that equate to our own lives. Right or wrong, good or bad, each of those moments travel together to make us who we are—all of us ending with a comma, period, or exclamation point.
In grammatical terms: Oh, how they had lived!
Indeed, I’ve studied these people (or members of my own family in any event) since the Carter Administration, and back when home computers were the size of Volkswagens. They were the "original ones"—the people I first questioned as a kid and later began to research as an adult. For me, they were titans. But who were they really? Where did they - or we - come from?
Why did there never seem to be any answers?
Lately, even with all the so-called genealogical breakthroughs I've had through the years, I’ve come to realize I don't really know them at all. Their lives are proving out to be so much more multi-layered than than I once believed, and extending far beyond the reach of simple vital records.
Now, with the help of better access to different types of documents beyond just the "basic vitals," and, yes, alongside the evil genius behind "AI searches," I’m able to learn so much more. Because of this, I thought I’d share a couple of these profiles of people I thought there was nothing left to learn about. Who knows? Maybe they’re still reaching out, trying to get someone to understand the rest of the story.
The Conundrum
The story of my great-great-grandfather, John H. Record (1840–1915), is perhaps the most peculiar—and for me, the best conundrum. It's a conundrum that has nothing to do with his mystery extra (and often quite random) middle initial "O" or any silly dark secret from his wagon train days heading west from Maryland to Kansas. Rather, it deals with a fourteen-year-old ward of the court named James Fillon (1869–?), whom my great-great grandfather, John H. Record, took in to raise.
Keep in mind, John had two wives (widowed once) and twelve kids of his own between the two. And while it's true that in nineteenth-century Kansas, taking in an orphan wasn't unheard of.... but you see... here's the unsettling part: he "farmed out" two of his own biological sons at almost the exact same time he took in this foster ward.
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It’s a head-scratcher: You can’t take care of your own kids, but you’ll take in someone else’s?
Sadly, the reason was likely cold economics. He couldn’t afford his older boys, but the foster boy provided a county stipend. It’s a tough break when you have to trade two of your own flesh and blood for a child who brings in a check. In John’s defense, he still had ten other mouths to feed. Survival in the 1880s was a brutal business. It’s a part of the story you never see in any census record. So just who were you, James Fillon?
Stay tuned.
On the Wagon
Then there are the rumors—the ones other branches of the family whisper, or stories that were perhaps too painful for our own branch to recall.
"Is it true your great-grandfather was crushed by a barrel that rolled off a wagon and disfigured him? That he nearly died?"
My great-grandfather, Frank Record (John’s son), was a fastidious man, a church janitor, and as kind human being as you would ever want to know - and a guy who flirted with his nurses even in his eighties. Surely the rumors were wrong. Frank had been dead thirty years; what did they know?
Still... I remembered the one clouded lens in his eyewear. What was he hiding? As a boy, I didn't see disfigurements. He was past perfect to me. I did remember how his head seemed a bit flat on one side. Yet, he was the kindest great-grandfather a boy could ask for. Why would I believe such a rumor?
He was four years old.
Yesterday, the truth surfaced. An AI search did what three decades of manual digging couldn’t: it indexed a grainy, century-old newspaper scan lost in time. In black and white, it detailed the awful accident of a little boy who would eventually grow up to father the family that produced me. The rumors hadn't wronged him; they were all too true.
Still, he was so perfect just the way he was.
The Girl
Every good story has one, right? For this one, I need to circle back to John H. Record and introduce you to Della Record (1887-1910). She died at the tender age of twenty-three, leaving behind a husband, Theodore, and a little girl named Juanita.
I found a guardianship document for little Juanita, but the "why" was confusing. Apparently, Kansas law was rigid: even though Juanita’s father, Theodore, was alive, he had to legally become her "guardian" to manage her affairs. Della (born Miss Della Crockett) had left an inheritance, and the law required Theodore to post a bond—a legal guarantee that even though he was her father, he wouldn't abscond with his daughter’s portion of her mother’s estate.
In an act of family solidarity, John H. Record and his sons stepped up to put up the money, protecting little Juanita’s future. Who knew? Little did they know that Juanita would grow up to marry a man whose family had nearly sailed on the ill-fated Titanic—but that’s a tale for another day.
The Legacy
I couldn't believe it when the digital snippet appeared on my screen. I had seen this information before; it was, after all, in a binder on my bookshelf. It was the same binder my cousin Barbara had given me years ago, back when she first told me the rumor about Frank being crushed by the wagon. She had handed me that binder, along with a single photo of Della, before Alzheimer’s claimed her mind. She gave them to me because she was terrified she would forget it all.
But what was it doing here? It turns out, Barbara had the foresight to send a copy of her records to the archives in Salt Lake City. A simple, Commodore 64-style computer printout from decades ago had been preserved in the Granite Mountain vaults. And now, Barbara's work was available on an AI and Internet search.
Incredible.
Barbara had managed to leave a record of us—The Records—behind. I wonder if her own kids realize that there is a permanent family legacy sitting in those reaches of Salt Lake's Granite Mountain, a record their own mother created and ensured would be preserved, just waiting for a text search to reveal it twenty years later.
She knew it would all end up past perfect. These lives—the lives of all of us "Records" - and any of us —are signposts along a simple road.
A road someone, someday, might, with any luck, just call... a road home.
END
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