Any Regrets? Oh, Yeah!

Tony Page

Tony Page

Well-known member
Do you have past regrets? I'm talking about achievable regrets, not wishes like, I regret I wasn't a movie star.

After thinking about it I have more regrets than I thought.

One of my regrets is my family history. On both sides of my family my grandparent came to America by boat, and were processed on Ellis Island. I would have like to know if my Grandparents had siblings or who my relatives are in Italy. I should have inquired from the elders of the family or my parents about these things.
My Grandmother garden was amazing, she had no insecticide, or fertilizers how did she do it? She dehydrated vegetables on a sheet of tin in the sun, no fancy appliances. I regret not learning from her, I was too young.
 
There's not a day goes by that I don't regret asking my grandparents more questions. Especially about the "mysteries" in my family tree. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been told all the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, though. Some of those mysteries were closely guarded, not to come out until just a few years ago.

I would love to know who all my grandfather's brothers and sisters were. Through genealogy research, I've come up with a lot of names, but I'm pretty sure some of them were nieces and nephews or other relatives, but are listed on the census as children of my great-grandparents. Either that, or my great-grandfather had "another family" on the other side of the mountain (which wasn't uncommon in those parts and those days).
 
Yes, I am on that page, too ! So many things that I now wished that I had asked my mom and dad about that I had no idea to even think about asking back when it was possible. My biggest wish would be to time travel back to when my mom was young and see her going through life before i knew her.
There is just so much about her early life that I have no idea what happened, except for a few stories that she told me when I was little.

Getting an ancestry DNA helped a lot as far as tracing back in my family. I knew that my grandmother came here from Germany around the turn of the century, but i had no idea that she had sisters and a brother that came over as well.
23&me is good for finding living relatives that you had no idea existed, so between that and the ancestry tracing, I have learned a lot more than I knew before I started doing that.

My daughter really loves digging through the old online newspapers and records, and she is pretty much our family historian. Now, we have a journal online where I am writing down family stories and what history I can remember, so that my kids will at least know everything about the family that I know and can tell them.
This is my mother around 1929, when they were living in Southern California.


IMG_0032.jpeg
 
Yvonne Smith said:
Yes, I am on that page, too ! So many things that I now wished that I had asked my mom and dad about that I had no idea to even think about asking back when it was possible. My biggest wish would be to time travel back to when my mom was young and see her going through life before i knew her.
There is just so much about her early life that I have no idea what happened, except for a few stories that she told me when I was little.

Getting an ancestry DNA helped a lot as far as tracing back in my family. I knew that my grandmother came here from Germany around the turn of the century, but i had no idea that she had sisters and a brother that came over as well.
23&me is good for finding living relatives that you had no idea existed, so between that and the ancestry tracing, I have learned a lot more than I knew before I started doing that.

My daughter really loves digging through the old online newspapers and records, and she is pretty much our family historian. Now, we have a journal online where I am writing down family stories and what history I can remember, so that my kids will at least know everything about the family that I know and can tell them.
This is my mother around 1929, when they were living in Southern California.


View attachment 501
Click to expand...
Old photos are so interesting.
 
Regrets, I have a few, but not about learning a little on my family history.

Looking back on my life, I noticed that I have cataloged a lot of things in my life that I enjoyed or was interested in, into books. I made a family tree book. I started it when I was around 23 years old, when I saw a name of someone with my last name that I had stumbled across in some old papers, whom I had never heard about. I asked my grandpa and he told me who it was! I was curious as hell about my ancestors at that moment, and I was all ears to learn more!

Grandpa and all my Greats loved to tell stories of their youth, but only if asked. They said youngsters don’t really care to hear about old people’s lives. They think they are old and dull. I wrote down everything anyone wanted tell me. I went to many churches, libraries, court houses; digging through archives. I wrote letters to various places and talked to my older relatives. I worked off and on the family tree book for years, plus documenting all sources. I copied court records of citizenships, marriages, death, births, and land deeds and much more. I wanted pictures! Again, I dug through everyone’s photos, visited cemeteries to take pictures of headstones, and wrote more letters. When I got my first home computer, I bought a family tree maker program and began to add all the information into that to organize my information.

I was lucky that I grew up in the family fold. Older family members gave me a lot of information and great stories to write in the book. Long story short, I made some books for my family members, especially for my “Greats” that were still alive. They were so excited and a little emotional after going through the book. I still have a few cousins that tell me the family tree book holds a special place on their book self. Sometimes I can’t believe I did all that work, but I was young and full of energy then.
 
I used to think that my only regret was not hiring more roadies to set up our equipment. Out of 10 of us in the band and sound crew, I can't possibly be the only one who "got old before my time." But later in life, I saw that was not the case. I don't know if what I feel is regret per se, but I think about a lot things because of unanswered questions.
 
Mary Robi said:
There's not a day goes by that I don't regret asking my grandparents more questions. Especially about the "mysteries" in my family tree. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been told all the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, though. Some of those mysteries were closely guarded, not to come out until just a few years ago.

I would love to know who all my grandfather's brothers and sisters were. Through genealogy research, I've come up with a lot of names, but I'm pretty sure some of them were nieces and nephews or other relatives, but are listed on the census as children of my great-grandparents. Either that, or my great-grandfather had "another family" on the other side of the mountain (which wasn't uncommon in those parts and those days).
Click to expand...
Mary,

I too, regretted not asking more questions.
I joined a certain genealogy research org., but just got more and more confused.
They send you a list of people that are second, third or fourth cousins. But you have to figure out which side of the family they belong to.
Also, when those cousins see that you are a cousin, they email you thinking those same questions
Also got three replies from third or fourth cousins who joined to find their birth parents.
Now I am more confused than ever.
 
Axel Slingerland said:
Try FamilySearch... It's free, and has all the same access as Ancestry.
Click to expand...
Family Search is a function of the Mormon Church. My mother was Mormon and our family has extensive history on that website. I recently discovered that my 15th Great Grandfather was Chief Wahunsenacawh Powhatan, born on 17 June 1545, in Powhatan, Virginia. So apparently I am descended from Native Americans and therefore I do not live on stolen land. What a relief.

​

 
One of my biggest regrets is I never graduated from college.

When I lived in Brooklyn before moving to Long Island after I graduated HS I went to RCA Institute in Manhattan which was just studying Electronics, which was the only subject I was interested in. I really like it there, and did very well. GE after the second semester had offered me a job. My parents moved to Long Island, that was the end of my attending RCA Institute, traveling to Manhattan from Long Island was a bit much.

I was living on Long Island so I went for an associate's degree in Electronics at Farmingdale State College. I cut so many classes I made the Deans list to be permitly suspended. My Physics professor did give me a chance, he said if I could pass the final examine he'd give me a passing grade. I took it as a challenge, I studied for 3 nights both theory and lab, and got a passing grade. I also passed Electronic tech. the rest of my classes had too many cuts.

I spoke to the Dean, told him I just want to take Electronics, I don't have the money to pay for subjects I'll never used. He wasn't buying it.

During my professional career I worked my way up the ladder, and was accepted by my peers as an engineer, and giving the title by the company even though I was self taught. I was fortunate.

Today I regret I didn't stick it out like a good student. Would having a college diploma giving me any more financially? Maybe, maybe not but it would have given me the recognition that I craved.
 
Only one of our children didn't graduate with at least a Bachelor's, but the one who attended a tech school currently makes the most money of the six. I took many classes that were not usable later, the most prominent was calculus. Most of the courses enhanced my life even if they didn't have a practical application, and it is handy to be able to talk about integration and differentiation with my eldest sons, I have never had a use for it later. Literature, psychology, philosophy, and sociology I look at as life enhancements even though they were not practical.

You can take courses online should you choose to do so, and many, like the Hillsdale courses, are free.
 
Don Alaska said:
Only one of our children didn't graduate with at least a Bachelor's, but the one who attended a tech school currently makes the most money of the six. I took many classes that were not usable later, the most prominent was calculus. Most of the courses enhanced my life even if they didn't have a practical application, and it is handy to be able to talk about integration and differentiation with my eldest sons, I have never had a use for it later. Literature, psychology, philosophy, and sociology I look at as life enhancements even though they were not practical.

You can take courses online should you choose to do so, and many, like the Hillsdale courses, are free.
Click to expand...
I did take about three home study courses. Two pertained to Electronics. One was on the proper methods to ship military products per mil spec's. Just remembered I took a course on photography. Both taking pic and developing film.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
One of the things I like about this site is that you can put in the name of any deceased person and ask it to find your relationship, and it will do a search back through both ancestry records and show where you are connected to that person .
Click to expand...
Yep. And it totally beats ancestry.com's prices as well.

A new feature in the age of AI is the AI Research Assistant. When you log in, it will do a search automatically, and tell you if anyone has been added to your Family Tree since your last visit. As usual with AI, it isn't always right. But when it finds someone your related to that you thought was still alive, that is better than finding out years down the road.
 
Tony Page said:
One of my biggest regrets is I never graduated from college.
Click to expand...
My grandparents were professors at Auburn University, and they got me a tuition waiver. They talked me into going so I registered in the Electrical Engineering Department. Our singer's Father was a professor there, and he had helped me fix a problem with our PA system, that would have cost me a small fortune to hire someone to do. While not doing me any special favors in my classes (which I didn't want anyway), he was a great help to me. He helped solve the problem with firing his daughter from the band, for being a total itch with a capital B. He talked her into quitting. She was an amazing singer, and her main problem was that she knew that... :)

But even with a tuition waiver, Auburn was far too expensive. My wife at the time was going there too, and even though she had a full scholarship for school expenses, we still had to pay for rent, utilities, food, etc. So since she was a year away from graduating, I dropped out so I could run the band full time again. I told my Grandmother, "If I got a job as an electrical engineer, I might make $15k to $20k a year (in 1980). Making an average of $150 to $200 a day playing guitar for 4 days a week, plus adding a lot to my retirement fund, I could make a lot more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top