Shenley Puterbaugh | Humor, Assumptions, and Inspiring Children

Heather Murphy 0:03
Welcome to the stories in our roots podcast. I'm your host Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives today. Discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connected deeply with ourselves, those we love, and the world around us.

Welcome to another episode of Stories in Our Roots. I am Heather Murphy. And today's interview is with Shenley Puterbaugh. Shenley shares how she took a two week trip after graduating from high school to learn about her family history, how she learned to infuse humor into stressful situations from her grandmother, and why she believes so strongly in teaching children about their family history and why and how that can benefit them in their lives. Here is the interview with Shenley. Hi, Shenley, thank you for joining me today. I am excited to hear about your experiences learning and connecting with your family history. To start us off, could you introduce yourself, please?

Shenley Puterbaugh 1:12
Yes, thank you so much for having me. I grew up in New Hampshire, my family have heavy roots in New England. And that's where I grew up. And I was a tennis player growing up, I played tennis in college, spent a lot of time doing that. Now I am homeschooling my three children and spending my time with them. And doing family history. We have moved a lot since I've been married. My husband and I've been married 12 years, and we've moved 12 times. So we are finally settled down and happy to be settled. But we've loved everywhere we've lived, there have been special things about every place we've lived.

Heather Murphy 1:54
Could you tell me how you became interested in learning about your family history?

Shenley Puterbaugh 2:00
Yes. So when I was a kid, my mom would tell me stories about her life. And those were my favorite story she would tell she's a storyteller and loves telling stories. But my favorites were about her. And as I got older, I had different assignments to create family trees. And I really enjoyed doing that and learning the names of different people that I hadn't heard about even for generations back. When I graduated high school, I had the opportunity to go spend a week with each set of my grandparents. It was an incredible opportunity and time and I learned so so much. I was able to spend time with them that I never spent one on one time with them before or went on to I should say. But I was able to spend time with them and learn their stories. I interviewed them. And I was able to go through old boxes with them documents, memorabilia, heirlooms photos, and they were able to share with me stories and things from their ancestors as well as from their life. We also were able to go visit places nearby because both of my sets of grandparents lived where they grew up and where their ancestors lived for a while. And so we were able to go to old homes, old churches, cemeteries, the beach, you know, different places that were significant in our family. And when I came back from that trip, I had around 1000 names to add to my family tree. My family hadn't done a lot of family history, up to that point. And so coming in starting with around 1000 names was really significant and powerful. And most importantly, the stories I learned were amazing and life changing. And I've used them so many times in my life to help me to help my children. So when I came back from that trip, I was really excited to share what I had learned with my family members. And over the years, I've been increasingly more and more excited to share what I learned with family history with my family members and help other people know how to share their excitement with their family members. That's I think that's a big struggle with family history is getting other people excited about it. So my passion has developed into getting other people excited about family history. So I started inspire family history, which provides ideas and tools and resources for inspiring children of all ages to love family history.

Heather Murphy 4:43
So why did you as a high school graduate decide to spend two weeks of this some would say like this great period of your life with your grandparents.

Shenley Puterbaugh 4:54
That's a really good question. It wasn't my original plan. For a year before I graduated, I had been planning a trip to Europe with my best friend. And it fell through. And I thought it was trying to think of other people to go with. And it just wasn't feeling right. And I was talking with a different friend. And she, we were talking about family history. And it just came to me that I needed to go visit my grandparents. It just fell into place. And I was able to have time to do that. It was a period in my life where I wasn't a mom, I was, I wasn't super busy with life. And I was able to take that time. And I'm really grateful I did, because I haven't had a two week period really since then with college and family and everything. So I'm just grateful that I had that opportunity and was able to learn so much in such a short amount of time.

Heather Murphy 5:52
Could you share with us an experience from that time period, I'm sure you had a lot of them over two weeks. But what's one that stands out to you?

Shenley Puterbaugh 6:00
One of the biggest experiences that stands out to me was something I learned about my grandma, the experience was that she had made this cake for while I was visiting, it was a red velvet cake, beautifully frosted. And she was carrying it from the refrigerator over to the table where my grandpa and I were sitting and we were gonna have dessert together. And while she was walking over, she tripped and dropped the cake. And it just went all over the floor. And normally people would be upset about that they'd be disappointed. And she did it. She just started laughing and she couldn't stop laughing. And that just was contagious. And my grandpa and I couldn't stop laughing. We didn't get to enjoy the cake like we would have liked to. But the experience was so much more meaningful than just having a cake because I learned that my grandma, when things are challenging or difficult as many things in her life have been. She uses humor or silliness to get through it. And to look at the bright side as a great story.

Heather Murphy 7:07
Could you tell me more about your grandma?

Shenley Puterbaugh 7:09
Yes, when she was growing up, she grew up in London during World War Two. She was four years old when the war started. It was a very difficult time for people in London because they had to be sent away. So her sister who was six years old, and her who was four years old, were sent to live with strangers outside of London. And the mother was sent to a hospital because she was pregnant. The father was off to war. And her older brother lived with relatives. The whole family was divided just for safety purposes. When she tells me this story, she tells me like her, the place she was staying was a beautiful place. And the woman was so kind but her and her sisters just wanted to run away, because they wanted to be with her. Her mom, you know, a four year old and a six year old I can't even imagine. But there was one time when her dad came back from the war and came to pick them up for a day and he was going to take them to visit their mom and their new baby sister. So he picked them up from the house they were staying at and they were taking a train ride to the hospital. While they were on the train that enemy planes came and bombed. We're bombing the train or trying to bomb the train. My grandma's father, my great grandfather shoved his two little girls under the seat of the of the train. And they waited. And luckily they survived. They were okay. But the train was completely destroyed. It couldn't keep going. So they had to get off the train and walk to the hospital, which was not close. So they walked. And what my grandma says is that as they were walking, like this was a really traumatic experience they just been through. But as they were walking, her dad started singing silly British pub songs. And they were skipping along because he was trying to help them take their mind off of this horrible traumatic experience that they had just been through. And she was able to come out of that. These are songs that now my grandma sang to me as a child, I sing to my children. These British pub songs are silly and fun, and really great. So this experience really helped me. And it has helped me especially recently, because I've been the type that really likes to spend my time wisely. And so as I read when I read books to my kids, I want to have like educational books or meaningful books. And during this pandemic time, I was trying to think of a book that we could read together. And I just had no desire to read any books that were serious, like I was thinking of, you know, number, the stars are different books that that we're about getting through difficult times. And I'm like, I don't even want to think about this time right now I want to have a fun book that gets our mind off of it. And so we listened to an audio book that was just fun. And it was silly, and it was exactly what we needed. So that experience that my grandma had really helped me to realize that having fun and being silly and serious times can really help us.

Heather Murphy 10:39
That is a great perspective and kind of a unique thing that you have a family's songs that have been passed down through generations that Yeah, that's a unique way to connect with an ancestor or an experience as well. What other stories have been significant in your family history and meaningful to you?

Shenley Puterbaugh 10:58
I learned from my other Grandma, about her father, who was my, my great grandfather, sorry, my great grandfather's father. His name is Hans Christian Larson. And he and his wife and his two children came over from Denmark. They were immigrants. What I learned was really interesting, because I was I was doing research on him. And I hadn't talked to my grandma a lot about him at this point. But I was doing research. And I found a document saying that his wife, his wife, Han Sina, was living on her own. And it didn't say that she was a widow. I assumed and a researcher I was working with assumed that he had abandoned the family. As I talked to my grandma about this. She said, Oh, no, that's not what happened. I was like, Oh, good. I'm glad I can still ask you. And she said, That's not what happened. It was during World War Two. Here's another world war two story. But it was before World War Two when they immigrated, and they left their money in a bank in Denmark. And when World War Two broke out, he was worried about his savings, his family's money. And he went back to Denmark to bring it over. And went while he was there. He got it out of the bank, and he went to leave, but they wouldn't let him leave. Because it was war times. They said, money cannot leave Denmark at this time. So he had to stay during World War Two in Denmark without his family. The reason he did that was to protect his family's livelihood, protect what they their future, right. And so it wasn't a story of abandonment. It was a story of courage, and a story of doing something difficult. And she then shared with me that on his way back, he was quarantined at Ellis Island on his way back. And he got ill during the quarantine someone else had been ill and he contracted this illness and shortly after he passed away, so I thought that was such a tragic story, but also showing commitment to your family and to providing for his family. It was a tragedy. But it was something that I just learned how important it is to learn stories from people who are alive because as much as research will help us research can help us a lot and we can find a lot of stories through research. But sometimes what we learn from research or what we assume is the story isn't the complete story.

Stories in Our Roots 13:44
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Heather Murphy 14:29
And that is such an important thing to keep in mind. Sometimes when we're researching, we think Oh, that's too far back for anyone to know anything. But then if you think well, your grandparents knew their grandparents and their grandparents knew their grandparents that actually those stories can still be alive through several generations.

Shenley Puterbaugh 14:49
Definitely.

Heather Murphy 14:50
Yeah. And how tragic it is. If we assume we know someone's story from the documents that we can find and judge them on that. Yes. At some point, we do need to like, put things together as best we can. But I mean, this is a perfect example of how we need to be very, very careful what we assume.

Shenley Puterbaugh 15:09
Definitely. And a lot of times things aren't always what they seem even even if we do know stories, we don't know all the sides of the story. And it's important to find out as much as we can. So you have as much of the truth that we're passing on as possible.

Heather Murphy 15:25
Yeah, that's a definitely a good point, too, because everybody has their own their own slant on how something went, depending on what information they have. So then that's a good reason to ask not just your grandparents, but then like grandparents, siblings, and yes, talk to as many people as possible. You mentioned to me before about how DNA helped you unlock part of your family history? Can you tell me more details about that?

Shenley Puterbaugh 15:51
Yes, that was really a fun experience. So I have a great great grandmother, who was a dead end, I could not find any information on her or her parents other than her maiden name, and her birth year.

Heather Murphy 16:08
And what part of the country or world was she from.

Shenley Puterbaugh 16:10
This was Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, New Jersey area, she married and lived with her husband in New Jersey. So that's all I knew at that point. All I knew was her first name, last name, her name is willamina signs, and that she was born in 1882. No other records, nothing I could find on her for years. And occasionally, I would go back to her. And I feel like I just want to, I feel like I need to find something here. And I just couldn't find it. And then finally, one time, I went back and I was looking at her death record, which didn't have her parents names on there. But I found her death record. And it had her social security number on there. And I was like, Huh, I had heard that Social Security applications could be purchased. And that Social Security applications had a lot of information on people because when they applied for their social security number they had to put in where they were born, their parents names, etc. So I got on the website and ordered her social security application. And I was so excited, and it took so long for it to come. But once I finally got it in the mail, I opened it up, and it had her parents names, and I was thrilled to get one more generation further back. And then as I tried to look up her parents names, there were multiple people in the area with those two names Clara and Louis, that I could not get even, it just went from willamina being the dead end to her parents being the dead end. I did as much research as I could, but I really could not figure out which specific Louis and Clara, they were years years go by. And I took an ancestry DNA test. When I got the results, I was able to go on and look at people who I was related to. And so I just started going through the list and just clicking on them and looking at their tree and seeing how we were connected. And I clicked one tree, and it had Lewis and Clara on there. And I was like, Ah, great. So I click on the tree. And I look and there's seven different children that they had. But willamina wasn't there. And I was so confused. Because I mean, clearly we were related. There was no other line that I could see that we were related on. And so I started thinking and what I realized is that was her birth year. She was born in 1882. So she wasn't on the 1880 census, the 1890 census was burned, the majority of it was burned. So that wasn't available. And the 1900 census, she was 18 and had already left home. So there was no evidence of her being connected to her family, other than this DNA proof, which I ended up later going to a DNA class at roots tech and realizing they were saying that that's not enough proof. I was like, Okay, okay, it's proof to me, but it's not like really, really proof. And so I still was trying to find proof, but I couldn't. And recently I found my proof. So I found her mother willamina his mother's death. Sorry, willamina, his mother's obituary, and in the obituary, it doesn't even say willamina but it says Mrs. JOHN German. So john German was her husband and says Mrs. JOHN Durham and so on any searches, she wasn't there, but it was it was her and so I was just really excited to have that find and the only The way that I could have connected her was originally with the DNA test. So that was a really neat and exciting experience.

Heather Murphy 20:09
Yeah. And that's a great example of how with family history, we have to just persevere and keep trying and keep coming back to those brick walls. Yes. Because we never know when you'll get a DNA match, or when you'll find an obituary that helps break that through.

Shenley Puterbaugh 20:27
More and more is always available, like yeah, keep adding, adding documents that become available and are digitized. So it's amazing.

Heather Murphy 20:36
Yeah, and I think that just one of the great things about what family history can teach us is that we can keep working at hard things. And even if it takes years and years, we still come back to it, we still work on it. And eventually we'll make progress, or we'll learn skills that will help us in other areas.

Shenley Puterbaugh 20:56
Definitely, what's been really neat is being able to use the stories that I've learned with my children. I've really enjoyed seeing how not only these stories are helping me, but how they're helping them. Recently in our last move, we It was difficult because it was during COVID. And we couldn't we didn't get help, like there's no one to help us. And luckily, we were moving two streets away. But my 11 and nine year old were needing to help a lot. And we worked for like six hours a day for a week straight, just moving our stuff to the new place. It's hard work is hard. And I remembered a story that my grandpa had told me about when he was 11 years old, and how when he was 11, he lived on a farm. He worked all day on the farm. But before his normal farm work, he got up early and delivered newspapers. So he would work get up early to work to earn a little extra money, because on the farm, he wasn't working, earning money for him. So he woke up early and delivered newspapers, then he'd work all day on the farm. And then he would go to a local bowling alley and set pins because they didn't have the machines to set the pins back up. And so he did that in the evenings. And at 11 years old. He was working so much. When I told my kids this story, they're like, Oh, that is a lot of work. I guess I can do this. Then they stopped complaining. And it was so it was so neat to see that story. Help them?

Heather Murphy 22:31
What are some other ways you try to help your children using family history?

Shenley Puterbaugh 22:36
Ooh, I have a lot of ideas that I share at inspirefamilyhistory.com. That's the website that I have. There's so many ways to I'm trying to think of a specific idea because there's so many.

Heather Murphy 22:49
Well do you think then it's not necessarily one activity, but like a constant drip of activities?

Shenley Puterbaugh 22:57
Yeah, yeah. I mean, any anything that we can do to connect our kids to our family members is powerful and adds up. Yeah, it's like a drip in a bottle. You know, every drip adds more family history has been proven to help children, especially children and youth with resilience, and with self discipline and self esteem. And so there's so many proven benefits. There's a whole blog post on my website about the proven benefits. And so anything that we can do to connect them is going to be beneficial to them. A lot of times we we resist sharing our family history, maybe there's been difficult stories in our life. But what the studies show is that positive and negative stories help the same. It doesn't matter if they're negative stories, it still helps children to be more resilient and have the self confidence. And there's many, many more benefits. Anytime we can do anything. I love thinking of ideas, of getting children excited about family history. And I feel like there's I've come up with three keys to find an idea that will help a specific individual, because everyone has different interests, and everyone has different learning styles. And everyone is, you know, we have different ages that we're dealing with. And so when we consider their interests, and we consider their age, and when we consider their learning style, we can find an idea that is specific for that person that is a lot more likely to get them excited about family history and wanting them to keep going with it and developing a love of it.

Heather Murphy 24:41
Well, that's great. And we'll have links to your website in the show notes. So anybody that wants to look and see what ideas you have, they'll be able to easily access that. Great. So for last thing, if you had one piece of advice that you would give to someone who was just thinking about stuff to look into their family history, what would you tell them?

Shenley Puterbaugh 25:03
I would tell them to talk to as many living family members as they possibly can think about the oldest person in the family, it could be a great uncle. It could be anyone. It could be an aunt, it could be a great grandparent if they're still alive. Depending on what age you start doing family history, but just finding the oldest living relatives and interviewing them, asking them as many questions as possible. And then even asking if they have siblings alive, asking for their contact information and just trying to get as many stories as you can. I had interviewed my grandma, as I talked about in the beginning. And I ended up going to England and meeting her brother. He was the only sibling that didn't move to the United States. And so I went to England specifically to meet him. He was an incredible person, and I was able to interview him. And the stories I got were completely different from the ones I got from my grandma. It was just incredible. And I was just like, wow, I could have not gotten these stories if I just talked to my grandma because her perspective is different. He was an older brother, he was probably eight years older than her. And so the stories he remembers were from a different period of the parents lives. So he knew he shared with me stories about my great grandparents that I had never even heard of. So I would say interview as many people as possible.

Heather Murphy 26:29
Thank you so much gently for sharing your experiences with your family history. It has been a pleasure to talk with you.

Shenley Puterbaugh 26:36
Thank you so much.

Stories in Our Roots 26:38
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