Waking the Tree

FAMILY HISTORY

WAKING THE TREE

ABOUT THE SITE

An archive of research mostly about my own very large family, currently spread across four continents.

Translations

Turns out, not everyone speaks English. When I’m unable to find an existing English translation, I translate sources myself. Here are a few diaries and documents I’ve translated as a part of my research →

Transcriptions

These are wills, deeds, town records, court cases, letters & epitaphs assembled around a particular ancestor to make them searchable and accessible. Transcription is a precursor to any story I tell. →

Stories

My ancestors remind me that my problems are small, that time passes quickly, and that people have always been people – occasionally brave, sometimes tragic, mostly resilient and always just a little bit messy. →

Hello

My name is Beth Ellyn McClendon and I’ve been doing genetic genealogy for nearly 2 decades. I spent my career in tech solving complex problems at scale, trying to pull meaning out of fragmented and contradictory data – always looking for a signal in the noise.

Genealogy is no different. Records conflict. Memories fade. Stories drift. The truth only emerges with patience and persistence. Finding birth parents, translating diaries, piecing together lives from scattered records – the work is fundamentally the same.

“No matter how tall your grandfather, you’ll still have to do your own growing…”

irish proverb