Eleven year old me did not know what genealogy was.

In fact, the only reason I ever found out was because when signing up for 4-H project categories I had thought it involved rocks. My mom explained to me that it was genealogy, not geology. I went ahead and signed up for it. I was disappointed, but it was for the best. The judges were more impressed with my family history binder than they ever would have been with a glass box of rocks from my driveway.

That first project only went back to my great-grandparents. The next year, my great-great grandparents Nikola and Josephina Salay. The came over to America in 1912 on a ship the traveled from Hamburg to New York. With them came their two daughters, Josephine and Marija. The small family settled in Farrell, Pennsylvania where two more babies came along (my great-grandfather George and his brother John). But soon, Josephine would die. Then Marija, then John, then Josephine. But at the time I didn’t know any of this. At the time, all I had were two names: Nick and Josephine. I had a city, the one that Nick died in, and I had a wedding photo.

My middle/high school years came and went; one binder grew to four and I never added any Salay names to that project. I went to university but kept up my research because at that point it had become my favorite hobby. I sifted through notes from my grandparents’ own research 30 years prior and started piecing together what was still only pieces of what didn’t even look like puzzle. Seven years turned into 11 and then one day while on Ancestry I noticed a leaf wobbling next to a name that I originally didn’t even think was correct.

Little did I know, that leaf was exactly what I had been hoping for since I realized how enigmatic my family was.