Drawing on My (family) Past

The Warlick Grist Mill(s), Lincoln County, North Carolina

I’m having great fun during these slow weeks of December, working on a personal project that been in the back of my mind for several years now. My uncle, George Warlick, wrote book in 2000 called What I Know about My Ancestors. It isn’t very long, because there isn’t that much to say. But he, and another uncle, Charlie (father of Tenet in Texas) have devoted much of their free time, over the years, researching the family tree and seeking out stories from our family’s past.

My project has become, with Uncle George’s permission, to format the spiral bound book that he printed up for family members ten years ago, into a more publishable form, “US Trade” size and “perfect bound.” My blessing is the opportunity to re-read the pages, as I edit the mistakes made in the scanning of pages and the photocopied documents that I have transcribed with my own aching fingers.

It seems that my family (the Warlick tree) have been famers for generations. We do not know any thing about what the first Warlick did in Germany (or Switzerland) before coming over to the new world in 1729, and moving down to North Carolina, and receiving about 5000 acres of land from Governor Gabriel Johnston, representing “crazy” King George III. He and his family were pioneers in the western piedmont of North Carolina, and my father and his brothers still own four acres of the original land, that portion now heavily wooded.

My particular branch have not farmed in four generations (includes my children), although my grandfather owned and operated a seed and feed store from the time that he returned from World War I and then entered the service again, along with his daughther and my father in World War II. I understand now that he didn’t particularly enjoy the work — always having wanted to be a school teacher (he did teach Greek and German for one year, prior to WWI).

The reason I’m writing about this, here, beyond than simply sharing the joy of learning about my heritage, is that I have been asked to speak at the Farmers Cooperatives Conference next week in Denver (who’s to judge where fate takes us), and I’m wondering how I might use this farming heritage in my talk.

Any ideas?

13 thoughts on “Drawing on My (family) Past”

  1. I would love to hear about what has changed and what remains constant in your family. Have you traveled more miles than all of your ancestors combined? Used as much electricity, etc… Do you go to same church, family names, etc.. I always find that fascinating stuff.

    Also how the family of 1750 had to share with their neighbors. Should we be doing more of that today? Are the best aspects of being a farmer the same now as they were in 1750? Do people farm because of their family story?

  2. Hi David: great post! What hit me right away was…cultivating resources…honoring the legacy of the farmers by using internet resources to trace the food from farm to table, reference the seminal book on this subject, and then so your audience the tech tools you spoke of here, and of course, geneology.com
    Just some brainstorming…

  3. Interesting questions from Brandt.  I would guess that I have probably traveled further than my ancestors – combined. As far as electricity is concerned, I don’t know. My parents and their parents may have used more because of the efficiencie of today’s appliances, and our choices, as an immediate family (we didn’t own a dryer until a couple of years ago. It might be interesting to calculate how long it would take to grow enough corn on that 5000 acres to produce enough biofuel to fly me to New Zealand in a couple of months. 

    I was raised  Lutheran, which was the family denomination going back to the 1700s, though my parents have joined the Prespeterian church (Scotish DNA bleeding through). What I find interesting is politics.  Warlicks have been staunchly conservative, for lack of a better term. The second gen Warlicks were Tories, fighting (and dying) for the King of England in the American Revolutionary War. Perhaps my more liberal leanings are a result of those Scotish genes coming through. They came over after their defeat at the Battle of Colloden (King George II), and were patriots (pro-independence) in the American Revolution (King George III).

    There are some interesting stories in there which I might share here later. 

    But back to farming, I think that sharing was a huge part of how things were done, especially as more and more people moved in.  There is a part where my great grandmother (died long before I was born) told my uncle about neighbors taking turns butchering livestock during winter and sharing with each other, so that no one family had to preserve meat. 

    What fascinates me was the sheer lack of information that was available to them. I wonder how much knowledge about farming changed from the beginning of a generation to its end.  How much lifelong learning did they have to practice.  My Grandfather and at least one of his brothers were college educated, as well as his wife, my grandmother.  But being educated in a time of information scarcity was quite different from being educated in a time of information abundance and rapid change. 

    Again, great questions.

    1. Is the education that different? The process might be the same, but the tools different?

      I have a feeling that farmers then and farmers now are great at finding the best sources, the best facts, the best recipes for success. They don’t have time for information clutter. Farmers rarely repeat mistakes.

      I find the history of farming amazing. On one hand it is our greatest triumph. On the other hand it is our greatest tragedy (slavery, Native American migrations, Dust Bowl, etc…).

      1. I think that what is different is that for my Grandfather, being educated represented how much you have learned — been taught. Today, I think that it has much more to do with how well you can teach yourself (learn) and continue to teach yourself.

      2. The difference, to me, is that being education, for my Grandparents, represented what they had learned (be taught). What you’d learned was pretty much the limit of academic learning, when there were no libraries, newspapers, or Internet when you went back home to the farm.

        Today, it is not so much what you’ve been taught, but how well you can teach yourself (learn) and continue to teach yourself. It’s more about establishing a lifestyle of learning rather than preparing for a liftstyle – if that makes sense.

  4. David,

    I read many blogs by people (mostly women…) who are embracing a return to things from the past in order to reclaim time with family and traditions. I think that it’s an interesting blend of the past and present to read and connect with women on the Internet who use blogs as a source of community, especially when many of them talk about buying local foods from CSAs, gardening, canning, making their own clothes, and drawing from their grandmothers’ experiences. Technology is wonderful, but anyone who thinks that it causes us to lose our roots hasn’t read what I’ve been reading.

    As a teacher, I love the idea of creating a connected community using technology. I try to help my students feel connected to their community and bridge generation gaps with projects based in technology…

    Don’t know if this does much for presentation ideas, but I thought I’d chime in!

  5. I was a farm kid from the 70’s. The biggest thing I can say about living and working on a farm is that I developed a killer work ethic from it. Driving tractor, baling hay, putting up crops, milking cows and doing work 7 days a week, 365 days in a year was huge. That kind of work ethic has paid off for me in the technology world because, like a farmer, I am able to quickly develop workarounds when I run into snags in the system. Like a farmer, I have to be resourceful and use what is available to me to solve a problem. I remember that when a tractor would break down, we didn’t call mechanics. To fix a problem involved taking full ownership of the situation, learning how the mechanics work, and fixing it ourselves. I can totally apply that to technology, resource gathering, and now to my role as director of technology. Farmers need to work with limited resources, as school systems need to do as well. Farmers need to work together to share information and resources. Instead of meeting at the co-op grinding feed like farmers of the past, I meet with other like-minds on the Internet for collaboration. Farmers take pride in their work and are salt of the earth people with their feet still on the ground – that is something that will always stay with me, not matter how technologically advanced I become. I hope some of this information helps!

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  7. Hello I’m a student of John Strange’s EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. While reading through your post I thought that it is important to learn your family heritage. As a teacher using your own family heritage in a lesson might have more of an impact on the students and catch their interest. Thank you for your time.

  8. Thanks for posting this. I’ve been doing my genealogy for a little over a year. I found that Johann Daniel Warlick is my 7th great grandfather. This is so so so interesting to me and my immediate family. Thanks again.

    1. Ron, You can purchase the book at the web site below, either as a print book for $8.88 (cost) or as a downloadable PDF $0.99. There is also a URL in the book to all the source files…

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