December 2011
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays with FAMILY!
Stage one of my family history efforts has about been completed. My goal was to find out who was in the Breton family descending from Jean and Marguerite Breton who came to America from Guernsey in 1857. Realizing that this effort is only “accurate” as of this date, I know that there are surely errors and the passage of time will create the need to correct and add new members to the family. However, at this point the Breton descendants’ chart that I have created is seven legal sized, landscape formatted, pages long. The chart was created so that I could visualize who was who in the family, keeping the same generations on the same lines. It began with Jean and Marguerite at the center top and as their children’s families grew, so did the chart. Their granddaughter, Edith Breton married into the Edwards family and those folks expanded to three pages to the left of Jean and Marguerite. J and M’s daughter Sarah married into the Sawyers which led to the Sawyers & Purcells on the three pages to the right of the immigrants.
I use a genealogical database known as Legacy and last month I noticed that it had a charting function. I told it who to start with (Jean and Marguerite) and it created the chart in the blink of an eye. It was too small to read though, but could be enlarged easily. Once I did that I could see that it was very similar in layout to my chart. The chart also included data for the spouses of the direct descendants, making the chart even wider. How wide? Well, using regular 8 ½ by 11 paper it would take 48 sheets to show the chart, 24 across the top and 24 for the lower half. Obviously, not a practical way to go since I had trouble piecing just seven sheets together.
After exploring a commercial genealogical chart publishing company I thought to take the saved chart file on a flash drive to a print shop near us. Unfortunately their plotter was having problems so another no go. I took the flash drive with me to California on our recent trip and at the Fed Ex office in Millbrae was able to print out the entire Legacy chart. It’s sixteen feet long, but does provide much information and visual linkages in one source.
So how big is the family? We have descended eight generations including Jean and Marguerite. As near as I can tell that eight generations includes about 285 people, living and deceased, and encompasses thirty-eight new surnames. We’re coast to coast, from Alaska to Florida. We are old with Leland Edwards at ninety-two and we are with young Brady Dubak being just one year old. There is respect for our predecessors in the names we use as detailed in a recent blog (http://genealfamilial.blogspot.com), but also in the usage of the Breton surname as a given name like young Breton Edwards age five and William Breton Menser age thirty-three.
A possible next stage of research will be to learn more about these many folks and to share their stories with the rest of you. Of course, other avenues of research present themselves as more is learned. There is much to learn about spouses’ families such as the Guptons, Haags, Glynns, Merners, and Wards. There is also a curiosity to learn more about why the Bretons left Guernsey and to do traditional genealogical research about the earlier Bretons before Jean and Marguerite.
Take the time this holiday season to value your family, appreciate your older folks, get them to identify people in old family pictures, learn more about their lives while you can, and cherish each other. You are all special.
Thank you to all who have helped get us this far. It’s been a journey, and I’ll close with the vessel that began the American journey for Jean and Marguerite...and us.
The paddle wheel steamship Arago that brought the Bretons to New York.
Relatively yours,
Mike Breton
PS
If you’d like a copy of the family chart, I’ll be happy to print out the section most immediate to you. I am reluctant to print out the whole thing with names, dates, and mother’s names since this information might be regarded as confidential by some. Unintended access by others may lead to identity theft possibilities and that’s not anything I want us to be part of.
