Genealogy: Not Just a Collection of Names and Dates

Around Thanksgiving of 2008, our family project received a significant contribution from a distant relative.  She was the niece of Delson Breeding who was my great-grandfather’s younger brother. 

A little background on Delson Breeding: he had no children so finding anyone who could contribute information on his life story was going to be difficult, especially since he passed away in 1961.  We ran into his wife’s accountant and we eventually were able to touch base with a couple of nieces and nephews who were very helpful in passing along their memories.  His niece took time on her Thanksgiving holiday during 2008 to write down her memories based on the biographical questions I had pulled down from the internet.  With the answers to those questions, we were then able to assemble a very nice biography of Delson Breeding and his wife Estelle.  In fact, the questions we used in generating his biography have proven to be so resilient that we have used them ever since that time in creating all the biographies we have generated for this book. 

After we finished working on Delson Breeding’s biography, I was quite eager to start the biography of his older brother, my great-grandpa, Hugh Breeding.  Fortunately, another relative had mailed me an old company newsletter where Hugh’s life was profiled.  With that information and some other data we obtained from interviews (and along with his obituary), we were able to assemble a pretty decent first draft about his life. 

Over the next few months, I completed the write-up of the Huston Breeding murder and the entire set of seven biographies (i.e. the stories of Huston Breeding’s children).  Each of their stories was very different and that was the beauty of writing about this generation of Breedings.   After their parents had died with many of them at such a young age, the children didn’t have much money and a few of them became incredibly successful risk takers in business – they just had simply nothing to lose.  There was no safety net beneath them.

To further illustrate, when I think about my great-grandpa Hugh Breeding and his move from Green Forest, Arkansas to the Lumber Camps of East Cottage Grove, Oregon in 1909, the word that conjures up in my mind is overwhelming.  It’s truly difficult to comprehend leaving everything he ever knew with a new wife in tow (and a younger brother he was looking after) and making a cross country journey on the Oregon Trail at such a young age.   He was just over 19 years old!   To think of the fear he must’ve had of Denton Baker who had killed his father and threatened him with his life…well, it’s just hard to imagine.  During my journey of personal discovery, I have often wondered what my life would have been like had he not taken that fateful trip to Oregon and then come back to work in the oil fields of Oklahoma to chase his dream and personal fortune.  So much of our life is fate.  I would probably be a much different person had he not been a risk taker to a certain extent and provided so many opportunities for his children, grandchildren, etc. 

Failure is Part of the Process

Still another important part of the research process is learning to fail.  What you eventually discover in sleuthing is that for every success you have 2 or 3 failures.  Luckily for me, I didn’t have too many early on or I probably would have probably quit.  One such notable failure was a cold call I made in 2009 to a business man who had knowledge of my great-grandpa’s trucking company.  

At the time, I was looking for information on the sale of the Hugh Breeding Inc. trucking company in 1972.  I thought, as with any of the questions on biographies, that if he were able to answer only a few, it would set my research way ahead.  

Well, the first time I called this individual, he answered the phone and I identified myself as a descendant of Hugh Breeding and that we would like to ask him a couple of questions about the company he bought.   He responded by asking me in a gruff, old voice: “Do you want some money?”   Shocked that someone would ask me that, I re-iterated that I did not want any money and that I only wanted to ask a couple of questions.   With that, the phone connection went dead.  

Of course…I thought he surely didn’t hang up on me – it must’ve been the phone.  I then called again and identified myself and asked if he could give us a few minutes to answer a couple of questions.   This time he responded even more curtly that he did not have time and that I needed to call back later (followed by him hanging up on me).  

For me, the shock of being asked if I “wanted money” stayed with me for several weeks but the lesson here in all this research is that not every lead works out for you.   Sometimes, you meet someone who is either not willing to help or is just flat out truculent. 

As a follow-up to this unsuccessful encounter, I visited later on with other members of this person’s family.  His brother was a real gentleman who was very engaging and told some wonderful stories, however, he didn’t have much insight on the company information I was seeking.  I also talked to his son and he supposedly had information on the company, but he never would return subsequent phone calls or emails.   

Cold Calling...but getting it right

After starting to learn the names of my relatives and how they fit in my tree, I set to acquire obituaries from local newspapers on the children of Huston Breeding.  I thought this would be a great way to learn about what happened to his children and their lives.  

Around that same time in October of 2008, I ran into a relative on the internet who had made postings on a family message board on the internet.   The postings were related to a "Mary Lou Breeding whose first marriage was to a Baker."

I felt this was definitely a person to reach out to.  I contacted the relative and within a few days I learned that Mary Lou Breeding had married Denton Baker and had a young son Dennis Baker.  The relative had also heard the story (that matched the one I heard) that the young son had eventually shot his father at some point.   Amazingly, the relative was also able to mail me a picture of my Grandpa Lyle Breeding with his great-grandpa Cunningham from sometime around 1915.  Being able to stay in touch with this contact was very critical early in my research as there were numerous times that I got stuck and this relative would help me out with small pieces of advice to get me going again.  One of the most important pieces of advice offered that helped me was reaching out to other long distance relatives and asking about their families.  So, over the next three to four months, I spend considerable time finding obituaries and cold calling these distant living relatives.

What I was slowly learning to do was a very important aspect of genealogy.  That is the ability to reach out to family members, establish trust and relationships and conduct interviews.  At first, most of my phone calls were referral-related.  I would pick up the phone, reach out to a relative and say that a certain other relative had referred me.  For me, I ran into so many relatives early on who were so instrumental to the development of this family history.  Within a couple of months, I had met numerous relatives including the only living cousin of my grandpa Lyle Breeding.  She had some incredible memories and stories to tell.  (I will detail my initial conversation with her in another post.)

Without knowing it, I was building an extensive family network.  Everyone I talked with was so helpful and more than happy to share their stories and pictures.    Whether it was by phone, mail or email, the stories and memories just kept coming in.  Even so, one of the key learnings in conducting interviews was to be as prepared as possible before you dial someone’s number the first time.  A lot of times you only have one opportunity to get the questions right.  Sometimes, you just never get another chance to ask the “right” questions as people are just plain busy these days.  Therefore, you must put lots of thought into the types of questions you want to ask.  Early on, there were numerous occasions (after the fact) where I caught myself saying “oh, I should’ve asked that question!”