My quest to discover the parents of my great-great grandfather began many years ago, and like other family history research it was picked up and put aside numerous times up as I went about volunteering in the community, and serving as president of the local historical society and arts commission.
A few years ago I made great progress when I discovered that a sibling of my great grandmother was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn with others of the same surname. So, I set about researching those buried on the lot. In small forays I made progress learning about each of them and how they fit with the family.
Then, Robert entered my life. Although we have never met face to face, his "random acts of genealogical of kindness" for me, and for other Faron researchers is a debt that can never be repaid.
Out of the goodness of his heart, and I suspect for the thrill of the hunt, he has done hours of research since he first said he'd look up a few things for me. The middle section of this notebook is filled with nearly 200 pages of research notes contained in the copies of our emails sent back and forth over the past fourteen months. My search that began years ago with one man named Faron has now expanded to nearly 500 people – four generations worth of people related in some way to my ancestor Robert Faron.
Nearly a year ago I posted a story titled, Benton to Brooklyn to Wilmington. It starts the story of two Roberts – now an update on the serendipity, and a couple of the weird and amazing unexplainable coincidences and discoveries along the way.
Shortly after Robert and I first met online he said, "I almost feel that our paths were destined to cross. Just a couple of days after my last message to you, I was reviewing my old notes taken in Greenwood Cemetery in anticipation of putting them in order, and there was the name Faron along with many others which I had noted more than 2 decades ago in a particular area of the cemetery." Robert's grandfather was president of the New York City Rotary Club in the 1920s about the same time one of my grandfathers was helping to charter a Rotary Club in North Carolina. Of course, this all began because Robert was searching for information on a family member who had a summer home in our community. How fortunate for me that the email for our local history museum comes to me.
All the things that I have an affinity for are interwoven into this story. All my life I have been fascinated by the Civil War stories of the monitors. Could it be that my fascination comes from the fact that it was my Faron family who designed and built the monitors, or that one member of the "family" lost his life when the Tecumseh went down in Mobile Bay?
For many years I have known that my mother's paternal great-grandfathers came to Illinois before the Chicago Fire. Through research years ago, I learned that her Kirkley great-grandfather came to Chicago as the blacksmith for the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad and that he worked on the Pioneer – the first steam Engine in Chicago. That engine is on display at the Chicago History Museum and I played on it as child never knowing its connection to my family. I also learned that Mom's Faron great-grandfather came to Chicago to work in the new Chicago Water Works. Of course, when I learned all this, my children were nearly grown, my grandfather was long dead, and my mother was not interested in what I considered amazing links to Chicago's beginnings. If you know me, you are beginning to see the connections. steam – water - museums - the stuff of my life!
I have a deep and abiding love for steam engines and am drawn like a magnet to boats and to water. I marvel as I watch steam engines at work. Watching tons of steel propelled by steam always brings me great joy and the blast of that steam whistle reaches down and draws upon my memory bank – real or genetic I'm not sure. Then there is water – from running brooks to vast oceans these bodies of water reach deep into my being as if they, and I, are one at peace with the world. They calm me and replenish me as nothing else does. It is as if they reach my soul.
This past year, on my own, and with enormous help from Robert, I have learned about my Farons and placed people, whose relationship to each other I have not known, into family groups with several connections to my life today. I have learned that my Farons also were drawn to steam and to water. The story goes they came to America with Fulton who designed the first steam vessel and the first two American generations worked designing and building ships. In fact, at one time the name Faron was associated in some way with most every great ship built in America. They were the chief engineers on the ships as they crossed the oceans in war and peace time and later generations worked in the first water plants in Brooklyn and Chicago distributing water to residents. Of course, Mike spent the last ten years of his career at the Winnetka Water Plant and our youngest son works at the Northbrook Water Plant doing what his ancestors did more than 100 years ago.
So now I sit here like a six-year-old child waiting for the gift Robert has promise he will send me. Last week he wrote, "I am on the verge of one and a half important breakthroughs based on recently acquired information which will surprise and please you. I am going to go back to the mun. archives to look for additional evidence, probably Wed. so I can report to you Thurs." When it finally gets here, I wonder where this gift will lead me and the others. I can hardly wait!
