Small Town Life and Family History

For a few days this week, Harmony and I took her maternal grandmother up to Virginia for the funeral of one of her grandmother's cousins. Much of Harmony's family originates from a tiny town called Ivor, and that's where we were. I met lots of third cousins, second cousins, removed cousins, etc. etc. etc.

This was a new experience for me. On TV, I have heard of towns where one does not need to lock doors. Ivor is one of those towns. I personally experienced that when the deceased cousin's family left early for the visitation and left the house to us, with no key. We just left the lights on and departed when we needed to.

The more interesting part of the trip was family history. Harmony's grandmother grew up in Ivor. These were times when most of your neighbors were related to you somehow. These were times when street names had actual meaning; many of them were named for people that her grandmother actually knew. We got commentary on most of the houses we passed on the road: some sort of cousin or uncle or aunt or friend had lived at this-or-that house. It was quite interesting.

The best part was when we got a tour of the house that grandmother's mother grew up in. It's still there, and it's been slightly modernized, but the house is largely the same house. To give you an idea of how long that property's been there, there were actually slave quarters. They were separate buildings close to the house, with little insulation. Still standing, but not habitable anymore. Aside from school trips and recreations, I had never seen something like that before. There's just something fascinating about walking in and being somewhere where you have a real connection to history.

History is much more interesting when you have a personal connection to it (even if you are merely married in to the connection). Sure, it would be interesting to inherit old Bibles. Even better would be to inherit old Bibles that were actually used by ancestors. Walking through old houses is fine and dandy. Even better is walking through old houses that your ancestors built, lived in, worked in, and came in to at the end of a hard day's work.

I don't get that much with my Korean family. Most of my extended family resides many thousands of miles away, so I rarely hear talk of the old days. I don't think my parents have many heirlooms in the house, if any. If those still exist, they are in Korea. One of these days I will have to ask my parents about family history and the like. In the mean time, I am glad to have married into a family whose roots are but a day's drive away.