Old Lady Status

I tell my kids at school that I am working on my "old lady" status. Over Christmas Break, I taught myself how to crochet....blanket currently in progress. I am looking forward to the spring so I can spend time in the flower beds....tulips are peaking. My latest "old lady" skill: looking into genealogy. It all started with a moment of curiosity: who used to live in my 101 year old home?

Image from Society6

I knew the family name who came before us but that was all. So after utilizing the fantastic tools made available by my local public library, I had a name and began his story. Louis Strecker was an immigrant from Germany who grew up to open a local skating rink that is still in operation today.  (I actually just accompanied my kids on a field trip to the skating rink that Louis owned before I knew the connection!) I followed the "breadcrumbs" of details through obituaries, marriage records, and census data. It has become like playing detective without the awesome hat or magnifying glass.

I shared my new "old lady" excitement with the kids at school today. We were discussing "urbanization" as related to the Industrial Revolution. The Strecker family left Germany to Ohio where Louis Strecker's father worked as a glass blower. The moral of the story: history isn't famous people who dot our textbooks.  History is an accumulation of average people who believed that the future held promise. History shows us that things can go wrong, horribly and tragically wrong. But after each terrible thing, a new dawn....a new chapter.

To me, history is the knowledge that there have been countless family dinners in my dining room. History is the fact the Louis married Rose and they raised their children in the same rooms that my daughter is currently playing in. History is personal. When we as teachers approach history as the collection of "dates, names, and vocab words", we deprive our students of the curiosity that is born from the ghosts of history.

Stay curious friends.....you never know what you will find.
-time to brew the coffee....
Hannah