Thursday March 26^th was Opening Day for Seattle Mariners’ Baseball. We were baseball parents, so baseball was a big part of our lives. A while back I talked about how far back we can trace our family history connections to various hobbies such as sports but short of my own Dad I really didn’t find anything.

I mention this because this morning in the early hours I had this thought that connected baseball to family history. You know those hours, before you crawl out of the comfy sheets, before the dog pounces on the bed deciding it is time for someone to get up and feed her. It often happens to me that what I was thinking about or working on the day before but couldn’t figure out suddenly becomes clear. I may not get the full answer, but I may get a thought of where to look. I keep 3 x 5 cards by my bed so that I can write some of this thinking down before they run right through “in one ear and out the other” as they say.

So, the day before I was working on connecting more migration dots for my paternal grandfather’s side. Then I stopped to watch the game until time for bed. Suddenly about 2am, I think, somewhere I have some baseball cards that belonged to my paternal grandparents. Where are they? What team were they from? What year were the players from? What is their story?

I went back to sleep. I am not that obsessed with family history that I am going to get up at 2am to look for baseball cards or feed the dog for that matter. When I did get up, I found the cards and eventually did some quick research. They were team photos that clubs used to sell like cards. They came in an envelop and were about 9” x 7” black and white photos of the team members with a copy of their signature on the photo. They were sets of 25. Mine are of the Chicago Cubs from 1942. I researched the players and coaches that included Dick Spalding and that is the date they all were together.

This finding didn’t tell me that my grandparents were Chicago Cubs fans. They would have been in Oregon by that time. There was a minor league team, Salem Senators, founded in 1940, that was a big deal and eventually became a farm team for the LA Dodgers. The finding did tell me that someone was a fan. My grandfather’s family was from Iowa and Pennsylvania generally and my grandmother’s family was from Wisconsin and New York. I suppose any of them could have been fans. It could have no connection, but my grandmother had very distinct handwriting and she wrote the positions each played on each photograph. I wasn’t planning on selling them anyway.

All this is to say, you never know when you might get a family history hint. It may work out or it may not, but it is worth following the path. Any connection that can be made gets you that much closer to the true story. I think that is what WikiTree tries to do, help connect people and stories. I also think that is what the class on Beyond Your Ancestors will try to do.

In the meantime, while I try to find my Dutch roots, I will continue to look for migration connections. Found one that moved from the farm to a brick factory town in Iowa to one in Oregon. Better jobs may be a theme.

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com