Genealogy bringing the past back to life
By CHARLES LEFEBVRE
Inside the Hillside Monumental Building on 13th Avenue Southwest is a room. The room features a number of tables, a few computers, and along the wall, a series of books and documents, detailing people who have lived not only in the city, but across the province, the country, and around the world as well.
It is in this room on a Wednesday afternoon in January where we find a trio of women, members of the local genealogical society, browsing the stacks of books, chatting about their findings.
“All of us probably got into genealogy because we had an interest in finding who are ancestors were,” said Doreen Schank, a newer genealogist, who has been examining her history for three years now.
“I wanted to find out mainly where they came from, we’re such a diverse country, with many ethnic backgrounds,” said Marlene Smith, who has been tracing her family history since 1986.
Many interesting bits of information have been found through their searches.
“On my father-in-law’s birth certificate, it said Prussia, and so I assumed it meant over in the European countries,” said Schank, “Then I found out that Leader, Sask. was actually called Prussia, and that was where he was born. They changed the name to Leader the year after he was born.”
“My ancestors were German, and I knew they had lived in the part of Europe known as Galicia, part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire,” said Stahl. “What I found out as I was doing the research was that my paternal
Marlene Smith, Doreen Schank and Eileen Stahl have found out many interesting information about their family history since becoming members of the Medicine Hat Geneological Society.
ancestors, although they were German, they lived in Poland, and some of them moved to the Ukraine.”
Germans from Russia are so common in the Medicine Hat Genealogical Society, there is a special section of the library dedicated to the nationality, and a special sub-group of the Society which meets once a month.
Marlene Smith, a genealogist since 1994, shared interesting information about her family history.
“I’m Norwegian, and tracing Norwegian genealogy is great, because it goes back to the year 600,” says “I have technically traced mine back to about 1100, but someone, and I haven’t proven it yet, has traced it back to around the year 800 and to a Viking leader in Norway.”
She also has another interesting relative she has found in her search.
“I’m related to Abraham Lincoln.” she said. “He is a third cousin, five times removed.”
Clark Lang has been involved with the Medicine Hat Genealogical Society for five years now, serving as its president for the past two years. He has been tracing the history of his family for 20 years now and says his genealogical journey began with a book.
“A relative of mine created a book about my dad’s family, and then gave it to my dad and his siblings,” he said. “I got it and I thought it was pretty interesting, so I started looking it up, as there was a lot of dates missing. That’s how it got started.”
“I just wanted to begin recording my family. In doing all of this, I discovered that where we lived, in Beiseker, my great-grandfather lived only half a mile up from us. I didn’t know that when I was growing up.”
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41110438•03/26/13
41110435•03/26/13
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