Natural disasters play role in family histories

As the 50th anniversary of the Tropical Storm Agnes disaster draws near (June, 2022), residents of Northeastern Pennsylvania can’t help but feel saddened and concerned as news of every new hurricane develops.

Genealogists too have to pay attention to natural disasters of all kinds, but historic ones. That’s because a disaster often explains why ancestors moved from one place to another, a move that otherwise might seem inexplicable. A disaster can also explain why an ancestor you’d expect to have lived longer suddenly vanishes or why a family line suddenly hangs by a single thread.

Sometimes a disaster abroad brings people to our shores, the classic example being the so-called potato famine (the exact problem is in dispute) that struck Ireland in the 1840s. If that’s when your ancestors arrived, you’ve already got a very good idea why they moved here. Natural disasters within the United States have also sent ancestors on the move. Typical is the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, when a drought in the Great Plains destroyed farms and sent thousands of people in a desperate search for work and sustenance, many to the West Coast.

Disease outbreaks in the pre-science centuries could pretty much wipe out a whole family, or close to it, leaving genealogists of today to focus on just a single name that moves the family forward. The Black Death (bubonic plague) of the 14th century ended some family lines and depopulated whole towns throughout Europe. Plagues wrought similar havoc among our Asian and African ancestors. The list could go on. Just keep in mind that in the largely agrarian and small-town economy of the past, a disaster such as a famine, flood, wildfire, epidemic or earthquake could ravage a family in America or abroad or force a sudden move just to survive.

In other words, don’t be a stranger to the history books. They can give you good avenues to check out.

DNA News: Ongoing for several years now is a project of using DNA testing to identify the hitherto unidentified remains of our service people killed in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The procedure has been to disinter the unidentified remains from cemeteries in Hawaii, test them via DNA and try to link them to living relatives, so they can be interred as their families of today wish.

The effort has been far-ranging, and while not all the remains have been identified, at least one area has been highly successful. “This remarkable project has identified 338 individuals from the battleship USS Oklahoma,” the Idaho Statesman newspaper reported recently.

Hit by torpedoes, the battleship capsized, taking 439 men to their deaths. The surprise attack, which plunged the United States into World War II, left nearly 3,000 Americans dead, many of them interred without successful identification, given the limited identification methodology of the time.

Genealogy Instruction: The interview with Sarah Klinges, president of the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society that I highlighted a month ago is available online. Just go to the Genealogical Society’s Facebook page and download it for viewing. It’s about 25 minutes long.

The video is more than a standard interview, with host Mark Fraley providing Klinges with the opportunity to offer some very practical advice for getting started in pursing your family history. It’s part of a series known as “The Mark Fraley Podcast.” Fraley, a former Wilkes-Barre resident, is an avid genealogist (with strong ties to my paternal line) and lives in Nashville, TN.

Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.