The Project I Started For My Kids

The record was dated 1850. It was a census entry from Wayne County in North Carolina and I had to zoom in to confirm it on my laptop screen.

Bryant Linch. 17 years old. Farmer.

I felt a rush of excitement as I began tracing the lineage of my last name back further than I had ever gone.

A friend had told me about a free genealogy search tool a while back that had helped them learn more about their family roots. Eager to try it, I started with my father and moved slowly up my own family tree. I wasn’t sure exactly how far back I could go.

What began as a search for medical history in my family quickly became something else.

With each record I found, I was reminded how hard life actually was during that time. The death certificates told most of the story. The usual culprits of the early 1900s were there: cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, TB. Then there were other less familiar terms that I had to look up: apoplexy, consumption.

On one certificate, “H2O” was listed as a cause. My best guess was fluid in the lungs or pulmonary edema for my medical friends.

There was also a great-grandfather who died by suicide, and this one stayed with me for a while. I found myself wondering just how much pain he had carried and how much of it no one around him could see. A name on a page (or even tombstone for that matter) can feel simple, but the story behind it rarely is.

As I moved further up my family tree, I saw a familiar old black and white photo from a newspaper clipping. It was from the early 1910s. The only grandmother I ever knew was sitting next to her parents and siblings, squinting slightly into the camera. Then something clicked.

Several years ago, my parents gave me four books compiled by family members who took on the role of amateur genealogist for each of my grandparent’s lines in the late 1980s.

They ranged from a large hardcover to a small bound visual guide with photographs. The pages inside documented the struggle my cousins had encountered tracing records before the internet existed. Death certificates, census records, land deeds, wills, birth certificates, family bibles. Confirmation required trips to libraries, courthouses, and hours spent at a microfilm reader. Remember those?

Someone had already done this work, and I was just picking it back up. That felt equally comforting and sobering at the same time.

If you trace your family back far enough, you will almost always find immigration lines leading to Europe. In fact, much of mine traces back to England and Ireland, arriving in the U.S. somewhere in the 1600s.

The notes I was jotting down throughout the process were getting rather long. I pulled out the details worth keeping and began adding them to a legacy project I’ve been building this year for my kids. I want them to know where their family came from, what those people faced, and eventually be able to carry that story forward when they get older.

After working through my own lines, I began tracing my wife’s. I didn’t get far. That line is on hold for now, for reasons that have nothing to do with the research itself. I’ll return to it when I can, but I’ll need a different perspective to help fill in what I’m missing.

Some things stay incomplete until the missing pieces show up.

The idea of documenting my own story, values, and hard-earned philosophies for my kids had been sitting with me for about two years, since an unexpected medical emergency changed how I think about time.

One thing I keep coming back to is how much I want them to understand about navigating hard decisions, building a life with intention, and protecting the hours that shape your life.

I have a lot I want to say, and lately I’ve been wondering whether I’ve been moving fast enough to say it.

But something about this project felt different from the start. There was no deadline. No format requirement. No client or stakeholder waiting on a deliverable. I could work on it around my normal work hours, on my own terms, without having to justify the time to anyone.

That felt unfamiliar. And honestly, it felt good.

Most of us have a version of this project. Something we’ve been meaning to start, or return to, that keeps losing the priority argument to the things that feel more pressing. We tell ourselves we’ll get to it during a slower season.

The problem is that season never comes.

It won’t arrive on its own. At some point you have to decide if the project is worth a small opening of time, even before your calendar cooperates and before you know exactly what’s it’s supposed to become.

What’s the project that has been waiting for you? Not the one with a deadline attached. The other one. The one that keeps getting files under “when things slow down.”

Maybe it just needs one evening and something to open. I started with a name and a county and a year.

Bryant Linch found me before I found him.

If a project comes to mind, write it down. One sentence is enough.

Until next time.