Normally, I like my posts to have a tidy structure that tells a story.
If it’s a biography, I like to tell you everything I know and draw out insights that might help you trace your own family. If it’s something other than a biography, like an ongoing/developing mystery, I try to give you a 3-act structure – either “a beginning, a middle, and a (satisfying?) end,” or “a pledge, a turn, and the prestige.”
That’s not happening today, so buckle up and prepare for some turbulence and digressions, because…
The Destination, or A Pledge
I want this story to arrive at a particular place, and I want a particular outcome – one that puts a copy of a particular book on my shelf. But I don’t think we’re going to get that outcome, at least not before this post goes out to all of you lovely subscribers. If at all.
The book in question is The Berlin Family History. That link points to the WikiTree page about the book. My connection to this book is in Volume IV, Descendants of George Frederick Berlin (1720-1759). That connection is my 3rd-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Berlin.2
The Berlin book has minimal information about Elizabeth and her family, but it has her birth date names her sister, Catherine, and provides her birth date – information I found independently, so I am pretty sure we have a match for my family. The trouble is that all of the evidence I’ve collected, trying to identify records for their parents, John Berlin and Maria Schierly, leaves several open questions, none of which are answered in the Berlin book.
I know this, because I was provided with a copy of Volume IV by the author/compiler, Reginald Berlin.
The Hero’s Journey
I know firsthand what kind of monumental task it is to compile a five-volume family history. My Callin Family History probably should have been broken down into multiple volumes; at 800 pages, it’s a giant paperweight, unlikely to reach the broadest possible audience of cousins. (I didn’t even manage to fit an Index in, which I regret deeply.) That book took seven years of late nights to assemble, and at the end of all of that work, I had something that I was immensely proud of, even though I knew what its flaws were.
Because I know how much work went into it, I have a pretty good idea how I would feel if some random stranger from the Internet started asking me questions about re-publishing my work or making updates and modifications to it. I am 85% sure I would feel reluctant to dive back in, and 95% sure I would be uneasy about trusting someone else with something I poured so much effort into.
Reg and the late Terry Jones-Cooney worked on the Berlin Family History together. Together, they traced the family’s origins to a German-speaking area of the Alsace region in Niederbronn, France, in the late 1500s. Reg’s late father-in-law, Roy Roushka, published the book in 1995. Boxes of the five spiral-bound volumes found their way into genealogy collections across the country, though, as you can imagine, it was harder to warehouse and market a family history like that in the pre-Internet era. In contrast, we still aren’t breaking sales records, but anyone who wants a Callin Family History can order a clean, fresh, newly printed copy from Lulu, and I don’t have to store copies or lug them around when I move.
I can save my storing and lugging for many different books instead of multiple copies of the one I lived inside for seven years.
The Titular Road Trip
My wife and I live in Texas, but our sons rent the house we own in Baltimore, and so we occasionally find our way back there. Visiting that house is an odd experience, because for about a decade, our “master bedroom” used to be in the finished basement. Before we moved away, we demolished and re-finished the entire basement, adding a legal bedroom, full bathroom, and open living space. So the room where I spent those seven years working on my book no longer exists, as such. The spot where I used to keep my computer desk is now the downstairs shower.
We needed to visit in July, to do landlord-ish things and visit our sons, so as we prepared for the two-day drive from San Antonio, it occurred to me that this might be a good chance to meet Reg and pitch him my idea for re-publishing his book. I sent him an email in May or June, and got busy with preparations. We were just a couple of days from returning to Texas when I got a call.
That is how it came to pass that I spent one of my last days in Maryland driving towards Harrisburg, PA. It struck me then (as it has many times over the years) that I have cousins and closer relatives scattered all over the place who I have never met. Waco is only a couple of hours from my house, but I have several Callin cousins in that area. I have a couple of cousins from my mother’s Tuttle side who live in New Jersey; I would love to meet them. I lived in Baltimore for nearly 20 years, and never met my 2nd or 3rd cousins there.3
I feel kind of guilty that the one distant cousin I have been able to arrange a meeting with is the one who has something that I want.
What Do I Want?
We met at a diner, and had lunch together. Because I am terrible about making records or taking notes (remember: “No one knows what they’re doing”) I have no records or notes of what we said, but I enjoyed spending time with Reg.
I brought along a copy of War Poems to show him an example of the final product one could get from Lulu.com, and did my best to answer his questions. He did say so in words, but I feel that the difficulty he faces is choosing between learning his way around a new and unfamiliar technology (using Lulu would involve creating an account, connecting it to an online bank for royalty transfers, and dealing with uploads of PDF documents and cover images) and trusting a random stranger (me) to take care of those things for him.
After the Movie
By now, regular readers may know that my brain is full of odd digressions, obscure references, and asides. For example, every time I research the Berlin family or think about their book, this 1990 They Might Be Giants song bubbles up in my back brain:
The song was written about the Berlin Wall, which was a symbol of dangerous division and the threat of devastation for decades, until it suddenly wasn’t. The lyrics don’t directly have anything to do with my situation, but they are evocative of the journey to recapture the past:
We’re in a road movie to Berlin
Can’t drive out the way we drove in…
This music has become a soundtrack to the journey I am on. It’s a song about visiting a place because of its past, a place that may not exist any more because history has moved on. It has unsettling imagery, dramatic shifts in tempo and tone, and conveys a sense of wistful longing for a destination that may not exist.
I don’t know which choices other people will make regarding the Berlin Family History, and I don’t want to commit to investing my time into creating my own version – a project that I know will be a heavy lift. Even with the help of a team, or at least a partner, I don’t have the time in my budget to take this on.
But I will keep thinking about the puzzle, and looking for a path to take that will end up at the Destination. I’ll keep digging for evidence, using any new skills I acquire to do so. And maybe I’ll find a partner to be my own Terry Jones-Cooney, and improve my chances of arriving someday.
Time won’t find the lost
It’ll sweep up our skeleton bones
So take the wheel and I will take the pedals
- Filmjoy is a YouTube channel run by Mikey Neumann, a Texas-area film critic and video essayist. “No One Knows What They’re Doing” is something Mikey repeats in his videos “as a comforting reminder that even when life feels completely chaotic, everyone is essentially figuring it out as they go.” Even the Greats. Probably especially the Greats – who are great because they kept going even though they didn’t know what they were doing. ↩︎
- See Silk or Satin and A Surfeit of Berlins for previous posts about my quest to find this connection. ↩︎
- My grandpa’s brother Norman has more than half a dozen descendants in Baltimore county. I have yet to make contact with any of them. ↩︎
Say hello, cousin!