I See Dead People

I see dead people--not like the creepy little kid in The Sixth Sense--but I see dead people all the time. 

My first bite from the genealogy bug came when I was in the 4th grade at Algoma Elementary School. My teacher, Miss Mateju, assigned a research project and oral presentation on any subject we wanted. I chose genealogy.

This was 1974--two years before Alex Haley's mini-series Roots triggered a nation-wide genealogy fad. My father, who exemplified life long learning, was making a study of heraldry. I looked through the books on his nightstand and wondered what kind of caber-tossing, kilt-wearing, bagpipe-playing folk the Mitchells were.

I'll tell you; I still don't know.

I don't remember a thing about the actual 4th grade assignment, but I do remember spending many summer days riding my bike to cemeteries in our town. I would enjoy the cool peacefulness. I would pick the moss out of the carvings to find the oldest stone, the person who lived the longest, the baby who died the youngest, people who died on their birthdays, most unfortunate name (Butt is still the winner).

This childhood game served me well in 1996 when I was asked to help with the name extraction program for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My assignment was to take photocopies of microfilmed images of hand-written death certificates from Cincinnati, Ohio, 1930, and transcribe the information in very tidy printing onto cards. This information would later find its way onto the searchable online databases that we love so very much. This is when dead people started to talk to me (no I do not need to increase my dosage--I checked). 

Sometimes the penmanship would be very difficult to decipher. Sometimes the old fountain pen would have dripped, the record would have been damaged, and the information would be obliterated or otherwise unreadable. Just as I was about to write “M?n,” these angels would look over my shoulder and whisper “his name is Morgan.” 

Dead people want to be found--especially by their beloved corporeal family members who take the trouble to look. If you’ve ever shouted “Woohoo!” in a quiet Family History Center, you know exactly what I’m talking about.