16 April 2013

Were They Waiting For Grandpa To Die?

One of my ancestral families "switched" churches. I knew a rough time period of when it happened, but did not have any way to narrow the time frame until I viewed the children's christening entries. The church where they were baptized helped me to pin down when they switched.

Interestingly enough, the "switch" was within a year or two after "Grandpa" died. Grandpa was a member of the church they left. It has left me wondering if the family waited until his death to leave the church. There's no "proof," but the time line makes me wonder.

Did your family wait until someone died to move, change jobs, change churches, etc.? I have one family where I'm pretty certain they waited until "grandma" died to get divorced--or at least it really looks that way.


3 comments:

  1. Great tip! It's always hard to figure out the 'whys', and this is an additional concept to put in the mix.
    I have one family I suspect fits this. The dad was a rather determined minister, and had moved some. At 73, he moved from Iowa to Sasketchwan to take a post. His oldest unmarried son and a daughter, son-in-law and a couple of their kids moved with him. Dad died a couple of years later, and the son died not long after dad. Within a few months, the daughter and family were back in Iowa.
    I figure the kids were not going to let old dad move to Canada without support. But when they could, they moved back.

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  2. I had a pair of great-great grandparents from Belgium that had to wait for his father to die so they could get married. The father who was prominent in the commune as an innkeeper and the mayor would not allow his son to marry the woman would would become his wife because she was from the family of a journalier and was the maid in their household. But within two years they were married, in Indiana, and he had given up his position as a lawyer (possibly a notaire) to become a farmer.

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  3. I have a situation similar to Linda's. My great grandfather was moving to Wyoming to make a new home for his family after his marriage in 1891. However, he made many trips back and forth between Wisconsin and Wyoming in his wagon as he hauled freight for other families moving West. In 1902 he traveled back to Wisconsin again, but instead of immediately returning to Wyoming, he stayed 5 years -- until his mother died on 07 Oct 1907. At that point he packed up one more time and made his last trip to Wyoming. Shortly after, one of his brothers brought his father to Wyoming to be with the family until he became seriously ill. A third brother then moved dad back to Wisconsin where he died and was buried. Plotting his travels via the locations where his 12 children were born, and documenting this was an interesting exercise.

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