Reviewing the traffic stats for this site is like taking a trip around the world.  From Iran to Russia, and all over Asia, visitors flow in from around the globe.  What are they looking for?  A review of security logs indicates roughly 99% are looking for holes to hack and take control of my humble little site.

And lately they’ve succeeded.  Much to my irritation, a hacker recently wrested control, took down the site, and replaced it with a shopping site for Japanese sportswear and industrial goods.  Actually, it was more a vehicle for some black hat SEO to try and build link juice for Rakuten.  Having regained control and restored the old pages, I’ve been sensitized to the modern reality that every site is worth hacking, and every site will be hacked, or at least be attacked.  Basic security tools have given way to more elaborate protections, which only seem to increase the frequency and aggressiveness of attacks.

The world of online genealogy has changed quite a bit in the 11 years this site has been live.  Ancestry has led the way in bringing personal histories and family trees online for others to see and reference, but I find their approach to content ownership and privacy problematic.  More so even than Facebook or LinkedIn, Ancestry takes the work and content created by others, claims it as their own, and aggressively monetizes it.  This may be a good business model, but I choose not to support that beyond a basic level of participation.

What’s next on the technology horizon?  The deeper integration of DNA data and research is accelerating the disruption of traditional research tools, and it’s only a matter of time before a platform emerges that effectively merges modern and classic genealogical data.

I’m keeping my eyes open for a new vehicle for cataloging and displaying genealogical data and biographical content.  But until then, I’ll continue to welcome traffic from around the globe, particularly the 1% comprised distant relations and family researchers.

Every family has secrets. Lots of them. Entire lifetimes can be colored by efforts to keep criminal records a secret, hide out of wedlock births, or bury marriages that ended unhappily. And in some cases, those secrets are maintained by subsequent generations, with only the occasional whisper between those in the know, until anyone and everyone who might have some inside knowledge has passed away.

My third great grandparents, Francis Austin and Eleanor Whitten, surely had many secrets. They had a rough life, and moved at least a half-dozen times between 1820 and 1855, migrating west from Vermont to New York, Indiana, and, finally, Illinois. Along the way they had at least 13 children.

George Austin early 1920s

Or did they?

My gr-gr-grandfather, George Washington Austin, was born in 1848, the youngest of Francis & Eleanor’s 13 children to survive past childbirth. But if Eleanor and Francis really were the parents, Eleanor would have been 47, and the next youngest child would have been born more than five years earlier. After giving birth to at least 12 other children, while it’s not impossible George could be Eleanor’s son, it does seem questionable.

George Austin clearly resembles his siblings. And as the 1850 census shows him as a member of the household, there’s nothing to indicate he was anything but a member of the family from day one. Is it possible George’s mother might actually be one of his older sisters?

George Austin and Harrison Austin

Of Francis & Eleanor’s 13 children, six were girls. Of those who would have been of age, only one, Susan, was living in the household at the time George was born. That she would have been 15 at the time could be further grounds for speculation.

Clearly, some more research is needed. By the 1860 census, Susan is nowhere to be found, and I’ve not been able to locate any record of marriage or death. And if George wasn’t a son of Francis and Eleanor, there was never any rumor or innuendo mentioned by his granddaughter (my grandmother, Vivian Ebi).

As the generations pass by, family secrets can turn into family mysteries. This certainly wouldn’t be the first case of a questionable family lineage, but hopefully new facts will emerge in the future to help better understand the real story.

Sally Byrne had been my mother-in-law for less than three years when she died suddenly and too soon on April 18, 2006 at age 68.

But in the seven years we’d known each other, we spent many pleasant hours chatting in her Palo Alto living room over cookies and coffee. We’d shared a table at family weddings and at Thanksgivings, taken walks beside tidepools, listened to Joan Baez albums and tried our hand at the sing-it-yourself Messiah in San Francisco, where we sang it, very quietly, to ourselves.

I am a newspaper reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, who has written about education news for many years. My mother-in-law loved to read, preferring a quiet day at home to most other activities.

To my amazement, Sally seemed to consider my articles – many of them on topics of educational policy, like testing and bilingual instruction – to be material worth reading. I know this because she talked about the stories when we got together. She commented on them, asked questions and generally left no doubt that when she picked up her morning Chronicle, she’d not only start reading a story with my name on it, but she’d finish it.

On June 17, 2006, I sat beside my husband, Sally’s younger son, Hugh, in the chapel of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Menlo Park, which my mother-in-law had attended for more than 40 years. We were still stunned at her loss. Then the minister asked each of us if we wanted to stand and say anything about Sally.

Nearly eight years have passed since that day, and I remain painfully aware of how unable I was, at that moment of possibility, to say what was in my heart. I hadn’t expected to be asked to speak, so that was part of it. Another part was that, as a late addition to the Byrne family, I felt intimidated – an unfortunate feeling that rose to the surface at just the wrong time.

I recently found a Valentine’s Day card that I bought for Sally in 2006 that I never mailed and which led me to think of all that had been left unsaid for so long. If I’d found the courage to stand up that day in church I would have said thank you, Sally. Thank you for spending time with me, for talking with me, for accepting and loving me. And thank-you, Sally, for reading my stories. I felt honored then, and I continue to feel so now, that you did that.

And I would say one more thing to my mother-in-law. I’d say, I love you, Sally Byrne.