Newport Beach : Long-Lost Relatives Found at Library

Tony Blackwell is quick to pull out his card that certifies he is the 799th descendant of Col. John Washington. After all, it took the 74-year-old Tustin resident eight years of searching history books and public records to discover that Washington was the paternal grandfather of George Washington, the first President of the United States.

While the knowledge of his distant relatives thrills him, Blackwell is hoping to find family a little closer to home and this century, but, he admits, he’s been running into “brick walls.”

So he went for help.

Last week, Blackwell, along with 21 other men and women, attended a genealogy workshop at the Newport Beach Public Library to help broaden their ability to track down lost relatives.

“Doing family research is really learning to use public records,” said Kathryn Ellis, a 75-year-old retired librarian who has been holding the workshops for seven years. “You don’t teach people. All you do is expose them to the information.”

Ellis told the group to “take a magnifying glass and prepare yourself to go up and down the streets” as they look through old handwritten census information taken by workers who compiled their data by going door to door.

The library workshops mention the importance of locating and keeping birth, death and marriage records, using library reference materials and relying on family heirlooms.

Ed Fitch, a 70-year-old retired insurance broker, said he recently found the family Bible and saw two names he didn’t recognize written inside it. He then attended the workshop in search of ways to find records that could identify the men.

“It’s curiosity more than anything,” he said.

Jackie Headly, the library’s adult program coordinator, calls the drive to find ancestors “a natural instinct.” She said Ellis’ workshops are a community service that helps library patrons find information about their families they can pass on to their own descendants.

Ellis said the workshops are particularly important on the West Coast because so many people don’t know their families. “I’ve had classes where half the people didn’t know their grandmother’s maiden name or their father’s father,” she said.

In many cases, families have moved to California to “get away from their families,” Ellis said. Consequently, “the second generation is now looking for those ties.”

Blackwell’s lifelong interest in his family’s history has taken him to North Carolina, where his grandfather spent the first six years of his life and where much of his family lives.

While reading a history book on Yadkin County, N.C., he found distant cousins, who then led him to relatives in San Clemente, he said.

Although he’d always been curious about his family roots, Blackwell said it took his father’s death for him to take the issue more seriously. “I just decided, if it’s ever going to be done, I was going to have to do it and I better get at it.”

The next genealogy workshop is April 24. For information, call the Newport Beach Public Library at (714) 644-3181.