Sally Crouch

Charlotte Sellers, left, of Jackson County Public Library assists Seymour resident Sally Crouch with using the Internet to research family history in a recent class at the Seymour Library.
...
Armed with an overstuffed three-ring binder filled with old hand-written notes and photographs, Sally Crouch of Seymour couldn't wait to begin the journey into her past.

Truth be told, she has walked that path before, but now she has more time and more resources. She's ready to see just how far she can go.

"I'm so excited," she said.

Crouch is one of many local residents who has found genealogy to be more than just filling out the boxes on a family tree.

"It's completely fascinating and better than fiction," Crouch said of her genealogical research. "There are so many stories and it helps you appreciate your family and the life we have today."

She has learned that one of her distant relatives was a young girl captured by Indians who later escaped, and another female relative was put into a mental institution for symptoms Crouch believes could have been no more than malnutrition and postpartum depression.

Interest in studying her family's history started with her mother, she said. "When my mother was a young woman she handed me all the family files that my grandmother had passed down to her and said it was my turn," Crouch said. "I just stuck them in a drawer and kind of forgot about them until about 20 years ago when I was home with the kids and had time to work on it."

Together, Crouch and her children started organizing the information and filling in blanks where they could.

"We would take trips to the cemetery to find names and dates, and we had fun," she said.

After Crouch went to work, she found she was too busy to continue her genealogical studies. She recently retired from Mann Bookkeeping, however, and is ready to resume the hobby.

This time around, she is looking to learn more about the people and stories that go with the names and dates.
...
A small group of people, including Crouch, learned how and why to get started studying their ancestors and worked on filling out a simple five generation family chart. This was Crouch's second time to take the class.

"I think it's wonderful, and I needed a refresher," she said.