From what I have seen, I am probably not your "typical" amateur genealogist. I am researching my family tree for more reasons than simply to find out who my family was before I was part of it.
My intention is not just to learn who was where, when and with whom. I'd like more than anything to know why.
This is not to say that I do not enjoy the information I have thus far uncovered. I enjoy it immensely. It takes me beyond suppositions and into fact. Bethanna Church was my grandmother! To be able to type that one sentence is a wonderful feeling.
I was born in 1968 to a father who did not want me. Don Brewster spent many years making sure I knew this. He also spent many years creating fear in the people around him. Don Brewster had a violent temper and none were spared.
When I see pictures of my father as a child, it is nearly incomprehensible that this is the same person. He was a very cute little boy. Darling actually. Pictures of him remind me very much of my sister Trisha when she was a little girl. When I hear the story of his mother dying in childbirth, of my father as a little boy pounding no his mother's locked door, it breaks my heart.
Still, there seems more to this story than losing his mother. There are other pieces to this puzzle. For example, my father's mention of orphanages. Truth or drunken ramblings? There is the elementary school report card with excellent marks that seems to be signed by a child the last four months of school. Who signed it? Was my father forging his own father's signature?
What of my grandfather's military service after his wife passed away? What of his sons? Is this how and when they ended up being raised for a number of years by Great-Aunt Maceil? Or did he abandon his children?
