Each year, on the first Sunday in August, we celebrate National Sisters Day. Growing up together, we often take our sisters for granted. The older we become, the more we tend to cherish our shared experiences and the more we realize that our sisters (and the sisters in each generation) may hold the keys to learning more about our direct ancestors.
My sister and I share responsibilities as memory keepers for our family – but in unique ways. She has the better long-term memory and naturally keeps the oral tradition of events in her lifetime and stories she’s heard from older generations. With my research experience, I am the keeper of written and recorded family history. Thinking to the future, I have interviewed my sister to record those events and stories she stores in her memory. She in turn has quilted tee-shirts from my youth so that I can bundle up in memories anytime I wish.
All of the women in my family have been influenced by their place amongst their siblings. My mother is the second of six siblings but the eldest of the four sisters. They always looked up to her, whereas she often had to follow her older brother’s lead.
Both of my grandmothers had multiple sisters but no brothers. One was the eldest of four, like Louisa May Alcott’s famous Little Women. The other was the second of five, like Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters from Pride and Prejudice. Growing up with all females must have shaped them. As in the novels, the older sisters learned a great degree of responsibility because they had to care for and support their younger sisters in environments that were less than ideal for female independence.
Since my maternal grandmother has passed away, I have interviewed her youngest sisters, the twins, for stories about her, their relationship to each other, and older relatives they remember. One sister even consented to take a DNA test so that we could have an idea of my grandmother’s genetic inheritance.
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Outside of my own family, a sister helped establish a Smith family from Orange County, New York. With such a common surname, we were not certain of the links between Gabriel D. Smith (ca. 1806–1885) and other members of the Smith family. Gabriel’s probate records mentioned money owed to his sister Mary A. Smith.[1] She made her will on 27 August 1885, naming her siblings’ children and grandchildren as her heirs. The heirs included Gabriel’s sons, Moses and Benjamin Smith.[2] Gabriel’s death record did not include his mother’s maiden name, but Mary’s did! They were the children of Moses and Hannah (Jaquish) Smith.[3]
As we celebrate Sisters Day, we can take a moment to thank all the sisters who helped our families bloom into the present and future generations.
[1] Orange Co., N.Y., Decrees, N: 422–24 [FHL 837,219].
[2] Orange Co., N.Y., Wills, 54: 20–22 [FHL 836,331].
[3] N.Y. State Death Certificate #8970 (1885) and #18863 (1890), New York State Department of Health, Albany, N.Y.
