While she believes he may have embellished some for her benefit , she places a great value on these stories of the past . “ I think everybody deserves to have their stories told . The people telling their stories get to stay alive in your mind ,” she said .
Moreover , she feels it ’ s important to preserve the information of the past , which gets lost when people pass away if it isn ’ t recorded . “ My dad grew up in Alabama and every year they would butcher hogs . Those people knew how to live , how to survive . Now you have people that can ’ t make their own meal at night .”
As someone who grew up on a ranch , she said she has a foot in both past and present ways of doing things . “ I cook , I garden , I know how to do stuff ,” adding with a chuckle , “ I ’ m waiting for the apocalypse .” She fears this basic survival knowledge is slipping away . “ I think it ’ s important that we not only revere our ancestors but realize what they knew that we don ’ t know now .”
For more than thirty years , she has made a good effort to do just that . Most of her ancestors hail from England , Ireland , Scotland , Greece and Canada . Her family has been in California for a long time , with five generations having graduated from Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill , beginning with her grandmother and extending to her grand children .
Genealogy has not only helped her fill in answers to pieces of her direct lineage , but missing parts of her ancestry for other family members . Thanks to her research she learned about a Canadian ancestor who lived in the 1840s named Neil Raney . He had angered his mother Mary by refusing to move his family back to take care of her after the death of his father , so his mother wrote him out of the family Bible . “ History says he married and he died .” No one believed he ’ d had any children , and Larton had to produce documents that she ’ d unearthed for third and fourth cousins that proved he did .
Even more personally , though , her research helped facilitate a reconnection . A cousin on her Greek side , Richard Agaliotis , had not seen his father since 1952 due to conflicts between them . By giving them each other ’ s contact information , they eventually began speaking on the phone , and then eventually met up in person at a christening in New York . “ They mended their relationship just because I was interested in finding out my genealogy ,” she said .
For her the pursuit of her genealogy has been more than a hobby . “ When you look at your family history , you ’ re involved .” She feels that genealogy could be a “ more vibrant way ” to teach people history because of the way it opens very personal doors . For her , these doors have literally opened to cousins in Oregon , on the Craig side of the family , with whom she stays in regular contact and visits , or hosts when they come to visit .
In addition to her personal research , she has created a Facebook page she hopes more people will visit called “ Morgan Hill Genealogy ” where people can come and tell stories . “ I ’ m a student of history and I enjoy looking backward and seeing what we did .”
Janie Knopf : Carrying on a Family Legacy Genealogy is often a hobby passed down from an older relative , which is the case for Janie Knopf , a well-known Morgan Hill community leader and volunteer , who with her husband Roger , has called Morgan Hill home since the 1960s . When Knopf isn ’ t busy with her family or numerous volunteer positions for such organizations as the Morgan Hill Historical Society , Leadership Morgan Hill , and Rotary Club of Morgan Hill , she carries on her grandmother ’ s early efforts at family history .
“ My grandmother did it all by snail mail . She had to write
people individually ,” she said . Her grandmother had family members drive her around Pennsylvania and elsewhere to photograph the headstones of family names at cemeteries .
Her grandmother ’ s work bore fruit , as their ancestry can be traced back to William the Conqueror in 1066 , signatories of the Magna Carte in 1215 , passengers on the Mayflower , and the Daughters of the American Revolution , to name a few . Her grandmother ’ s little papers , hand-typed on thin onion skin paper now take up residency in a file cabinet , and Knopf uses Family Tree Maker software to compile it into a neat narrative of births and deaths .
Though she hasn ’ t turned up any earthshaking scandals , she did discover two minor ones . “ A Lady Jane Temperly from Scotland was disowned by her father for marrying the gardener ,” she said . There is also an unproven but compelling possibility that one of her great-grandfathers , John Rogers , the grandfather of Pilgrim Thomas Rogers , was burned at the stake for heresy .
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN JULY / AUGUST 2017 gmhtoday . com
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