Ancestral Quest

By James Redman

While it may not normally be the case, once in a great while, the pieces of a puzzle seem to fall into place with astonishing ease. The exceptional set of circumstances that occurred during a six-month period in 1998, beginning with a "discovery" trip to St. Edward, Nebraska, to finding a distant relative that happened to be a history professor and family history expert provide the core journey for Redman's Ancestral Quest. The story is also filled with family reminiscences and anecdotes, providing short humorous diversions along the trail of the quest to learn more about the Redman ancestors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644713433

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Introduction

Question: Your family and any pets are safe outside your burning house, and you have the opportunity to save one thing from within the house; what would it be?

This is quite a question when you stop and think about it. What is it that is really important to you? This question was recently posed to me. My answer was that I would get the information that I have accumulated regarding my family history.

No, this story is not intended to be another version of Roots. This isn’t the story of the trials and tribulations of my ancestors. This story is also not intended to be an instructional ABC’s guidebook of how one should go about the art of genealogical pursuit. There are many such sources of chronicled information from which those on the ancestral quest can refer.

This is, however, the story of one common man’s quest, like many others who have pondered the same, to learn more about from whence they came and to pass on to current and future members of my Redman clan—the results of that quest. This is also a story, which I hope many others share or can share in their future quests, to have some amazing coincidences occur that assist in their efforts. In my case, these chance happenings included many encounters with what I’ll refer to as fellow members of the society—the society of genealogy aficionados—some of the most helpful and generous folks that I have encountered.

Most of this story takes place prior to 1999 when genealogy research was not as electronic as much of it is today. And while there is so much information online now, I suspect that there is still a lot of information that has not been scanned into the electronic cloud and which must be found with feet on the ground as is the case with much of the information described on the following pages.

Have you ever stopped and contemplated the haphazard and astonishing occurrence of your existence on this earth? I don’t want to get too engrossed into a high school biology lesson but think about it for a minute. Those of us that are here are an extremely lucky lot. If one of those other billion or so of your father’s sperm cells had fertilized your mother’s egg instead of the one that made you, you wouldn’t be here. Likewise, it happened to be the right timing for the egg from your mother that would produce you to meet that certain sperm cell to create you. Already, you are a one-in-a-billion-shot winner. I guess this should make you and me thankful for our existence right off the bat. Then think about all the people in your ancestral past. All these people had to live to at least an age old enough to reproduce.

As you look back through your family tree, you will become aware of siblings of your direct ancestors who died at early ages, perhaps even direct ancestors that died shortly after the birth of a child that was your ancestor. When you contemplate these matters, even though there are several billion people on this lovely blue planet, the actual occurrence of any of us specific individuals is a statistical anomaly.

I will admit that my early interest in genealogy probably did occur from Alex Haley’s wonderful story, which I watched with great interest in my youth. However, as I grew in years, had children of my own, and further contemplated the haphazard occurrences resulting in my presence here among the lucky life lottery winners, I became more and more interested in tracing the past that resulted in my being.

So with this brief background, I will now begin to divulge the story of my ancestral quest. As my fellow questers know, the numbers of your ancestors are staggering. Going back just a few generations and quickly, a person has 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc. direct ancestors with which to get acquainted. Yes, truly this search could be a lifelong work if you were lucky enough to have the opportunity to make it a full-time endeavor.

My search has been limited, as I’m sure is the case for many, by the time spent with family, for work, and for other interests, which curtail the time available for this grand adventure. With that said and with what I would deem a relatively limited effort at this point in the process, I consider my success in the quest to be substantial and certainly substantial enough to maintain my interest to make further future attempts when life gives me the opportunity and time for further pursuits.

Here’s one other thing to contemplate while we are not too far removed from the math reference above regarding your number of ancestors. If you carry out the calculations of the number of ancestors to forty generations (and at say, three generations per hundred years—that would only get you back to around AD 600), the total number of direct ancestors is over one trillion. Consider also, that estimates of the number of people to have ever lived on planet earth to total around one hundred billion. The only explanation that I can come up with is that we are apparently all related to a much greater extent than what we think!

Let’s Get Started

The scene from Alex Hailey’s Roots that is probably most prominent in my mind is the birth of Kunta Kinte, with his father raising the newborn over his head and proudly proclaiming his baby’s birth to his God. I was blessed with my own little Kunta Kinte on April 17, 1989. While bringing a life into the world is quite a common occurrence, I’m sure that those of you who have been fortunate enough to experience this event firsthand would agree with me that nothing can bring a greater sense of satisfaction and feeling of self-fulfillment to an individual than the arrival of that person’s child.

The mere contemplation of this magical event, upon finding out my wife was pregnant, was the last straw triggering my immediate need to seek the knowledge of my ancestral heritage. With the assistance of my sister, Cydney, who by that time had two wonderful children of her own, I took my first baby steps of the journey by seeking the knowledge of my oldest living relatives. By great fortune, both of my grandmothers (paternal and maternal) were still alive in the late 1980s. My paternal grandmother, Leona Redman, was born in 1898. My maternal grandmother, Mildred Schaffert, was born in 1902. As I said, sis and I were quite fortunate that these grand ladies were still with us in the late 1980s.

I wish I could know all of my ancestors like I knew my grandmothers. Unfortunately, this is as far back in my ancestral past as my firsthand knowledge goes. In fact, I never had the opportunity to know either of my grandfathers. Grandma Schaffert’s husband, Glen, was electrocuted while