Scott Swanson
In one of the spacious, open rooms of the Sweet Home Genealogical Society Library on a recent Thursday afternoon, Gladys Siefert is busy organizing folders in one of a row of file cabinets lining one of the building’s walls.
This is Siefert’s 40th year with the Genealogical Society. She joined shortly after moving to the Brownsville area from Portland in 1977.
“This is one of the first things I looked for, because it was important for me.”
Siefert, 75, is one of four members who are the real old-timers at the society. Two, Sharon Leader and Carla Healy, remain of the original 23 charter members and Marge Lillich also joined, with her husband Richard, shortly after the organization was founded in 1975.
Healy, 85, is the only one who has been a member since the beginning, Leader said.
“After I was widowed in 1984, I worked for First Interstate Bank in Portland for eight years.” But she came back and has been active since, she said.
The Sweet Home Genealogical Society was organized Dec. 2, 1975, with dues of $1 a year. Meetings were held in the Sweet Home Library Reading Room until 1999, when the organization purchased and built its library on a parcel at 1223 Kalmia St. with money from the estate of member Jerry Mealey, at the donor’s request, Lillich said.
All four women give different reasons for their interest in genealogy, but most revolve around curiosity about their family histories.
“I was just interested in finding my family,” said Healy, 85. “Past my grandparents, I didn’t know anybody until I got into it. In fact, I didn’t know much about my dad’s side of the family at all, except aunts and uncles – until I started digging.”
She’s traced parts of her ancestry back to the mid-1770s, in Scandinavia.
“There’s always something interesting,” Healy said. “I found out my great-grandparents were divorced in the 1890s, in Iowa, after they came over here. I was kind of shocked to find out.”
Her husband’s family arrived much earlier, before the Revolutionary War.
“His family is actually more interesting because they were Oregon pioneers who came over the trail and settled in Lebanon.”
Lillich said she’s discovered that a significant portion of her ancestors were French Canadian – not the impression she had growing up. Richard Lillich found that her great-grandfather eight times back was one of the founders of Montreal.
“When we visited Fort Niagara and Niagara Falls, we were told we might have relatives there, who fought there and had barracks there,” Marge Lillich said. “Actually, my third-great-grandfather was an oarsman or boatman when they were moving firs along the river in Hudson Bay, Canada, to where they could sell them. That was in Manitoba, somewhere.”
Leader said she got started in genealogy after a high school assignment. Raised by her grandparents, she knew something about her mother, but not her father’s side. Research has led to some heart-warming experiences.
In 2007 she found information about a cousin in Columbiana, Ohio, in a relative’s obituary. She tracked the woman down via Google.
“I knew their names, but had had no contact,” she said. “I called one evening. A man answered. I told him my name and why I was calling. I thought he was going to hang up. That’s happened to me a few times when I’ve done this research.”
He didn’t. Leader learned that her cousin was a nurse who was working a late shift. The husband told Leader he would tell his wife.
“He said, ‘Oh, my goodness, she’ll be delighted to talk to you,” Leader recalled. Later, when she made contact with her cousin, the woman told Leader her husband was waiting for her in the doorway when she drove in.
“He never does that,” Leader’s cousin told her. “He said, ‘You’ll never guess what happened.’”
When he told his wife Leader had tracked her down, “she burst into tears.
“They hadn’t had much contact with their dad’s side of the family. He had passed away early, in his mid-40s.”
Leader said she attended a reunion in 2012 in Connecticut with that side of her extended family.
“We spent five days together. It was absolutely indescribable. I met these ladies who are my first cousins.”
They’re close now, connecting via phone a couple times a month, she said.
A lot of work has gone into setting up the library resources, members said. There is a large collection of books, many donated by members, back issues of The New Era that have been indexed by members, and much more. Much of the collection is housed on shelves and in a cabinet built by Richard Lillich, who also served as president for many years.
“He was a strong leading force in genealogy,” Leader said.
“Being a cabinet maker fit right in,” Marge Lillich observed.
The library is open to visitors and it’s not uncommon to have strangers wander in to seek their roots.
Younger people are getting involved, but Leader said they need more.
People can check out the Genealogical Society during its annual workshop, held each of the last 24 years. In addition to research within the library, members have made numerous field trips to various libraries, museums and other places that provide genealogical information.
Cemeteries are of particular interest.
“I find it very thrilling to walk through a cemetery and see the old tombstones of great-greats, visit the city they lived in,” Lillich said, as Healy exclaimed, ‘Oh, I love cemeteries!”
Siefert’s husband Gale grew up in the area, where his family has lived for generations, she said.
“When our kids were little, we’d stop at every cemetery where I knew Gale’s family members were buried,” she said. “One day my 8-year-old, Gerrod, said, ‘Mom, can we stop where our relative is alive, so we can play?’
“They knew what a cemetery was.”