The Beginning

The day felt like any other day, that is, until I lifted my head from my school work on the table to the family's dinning room hutch across from me.

“Mom, what are those?”

My little eleven-year-old voice turned my mother’s attention from her daily task to my little finger pointing to the old, tall side-board against the wall. Together we peered through the display glass window into the collection of fragile heirlooms, handed down from my mother’s parents. In the back left corner was a worn-out pouch, with a carefully embroidered “M” on the front.

“I don’t know. Let’s look!"

We carefully opened the hutch with its long antique keys and gently removed the bulging pouch, placing it on the dining room table. We tingled with curiosity as we opened the flap to the pouch. “They're letters,” my mother deduced. Letters? We pulled out the worn-out stack of papers, and discovered letter after letter after letter of correspondence between my mother’s great-great grandfather’s family, the Messegees. As we began to interpret the old-fashioned cursive handwriting, our minds filled with wonder and our hearts with joy. Ancestors we had never heard of, life histories, vital information and more were all preserved on these personal documents. My little eyes got bigger with excitement, and my child heart grew with my mother’s as I saw her joy increase with each letter we studied together. This was the start of my love for family history. And this was only the beginning of one of the greatest journeys my family would take - the discovering our long lost heritage.