Enter Your Name Here

As a child, Bet­ty Beat­tie lis­tened rapt­ly to her favorite song on the radio, “Far Away Places with Strange Sound­ing Names,” and dreamed of becom­ing a world trav­el­er. “I just didn’t know how it could be done.” Some­times dreams do come true, though. 

Bet­ty was the first child of Harold and Phyl­lis Beat­tie of Lyn­donville, VT. When the cou­ple divorced, Harold kept cus­tody of their four chil­dren before mar­ry­ing Cather­ine Beat­tie of Danville, to whom the cou­ple would add ten more chil­dren. Those in Danville asso­ciate Harold and Kate with the McDon­ald farm, Kate’s fam­i­ly home, in Danville near Dole Hill where the cou­ple moved in 1947. But Betty’s mem­o­ries span both towns, includ­ing her first home on Red Vil­lage Road in Lyndonville.

 

She grad­u­at­ed from Danville High School, and then attend­ed Lyn­don Teach­ers Col­lege where she earned an ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion degree.  That degree became her gold­en tick­et to those far­away places. She joined forces with teach­ers who taught over­seas in sup­port of Amer­i­can chil­dren at mil­i­tary bases. These teach­ers entered with the pay of a lieu­tenant with the rights and priv­i­leges asso­ci­at­ed with an officer’s rank. 

“The pay wasn’t that great,” said Bet­ty, “but our liv­ing expens­es were near to noth­ing, and we had week­ends and vaca­tions to trav­el and sight­see.”  Her first over­seas duty was at St. John’s, New­found­land. Her next was in Japan, then to Eng­land at Fair­ford (North of Lon­don) where she and her friends could bike to Stone­henge. “I have such won­der­ful mem­o­ries from there, like attend­ing Shakespeare’s plays at Strat­ford on Avon.” She spent her last year abroad in Bit­burg, Ger­many, where she had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a bus tour into East Ger­many before the wall came down. 

When she returned state­side, she was hired in Fair­field, Con­necti­cut. It was in Fair­field that she met William Bole­vic, her hus­band to be. They raised their fam­i­ly of five chil­dren in Anso­nia, CT, with Bet­ty was able to take time off to enjoy the job of moth­er after each child was born. All their chil­dren have stayed in New Eng­land, locat­ed in Ver­mont, New Hamp­shire and Maine. In 1999, she and Bill pur­chased a home near the farm in Danville in 2002.

 “The farm was always a draw for us,” she said, “and we often vis­it­ed here dur­ing sum­mer vaca­tions.” It was dur­ing the sum­mer of 1997 that Bet­ty became hooked on anoth­er form of her “far­away places” dream. This time the dream was trig­gered by Aunt Elno­ra (Beat­tie) Morse, Harold’s sister.

 “She was quite a char­ac­ter,” said Bet­ty. “Elno­ra was a short woman with a pow­er­ful per­son­al­i­ty,” she explained. “She was the town clerk of Jay, VT, and lived in Rich­ford on a farm. When she retired and came to vis­it Kate and Harold, she would peruse the Danville Town Report, look­ing for errors, find­ing both cler­i­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal ones, which she would announce aloud to all who were gath­ered there. One of the favorite fam­i­ly sto­ries of Elno­ra is how she pro­nounced the fam­i­ly name– “Bee-tee, not Be-at-tee. One time she answered the phone at the farm and when the par­ty on the oth­er end asked for Occie Be-at-tee she said, ‘There is no one here by that name,’ and hung up.”

This same Elno­ra, while seat­ed around Kate’s table con­vers­ing with those gath­ered there that sum­mer morn­ing in 1997 said she would like to go to Cana­da to vis­it some ceme­ter­ies near Lennoxville, Que­bec. The lure of trav­el called to Bet­ty, who spoke up. “I’ll take you.”  Before going, though, Bet­ty took her aunt to the Mid­dle­sex library where Elno­ra was intro­duced to micro­fiche. “She loved it,” said Bet­ty. “Find­ing lots of fam­i­ly names was like dis­cov­er­ing a mys­tery for us. She was so excit­ed, and I got caught up in it, too.”

Armed with new infor­ma­tion about her father’s moth­er and father, Tom Beat­tie and Bet­ty took Elno­ra across the bor­der. “We end­ed the day at St. James church ceme­tery in Leeds,” said Bet­ty.  “It was dusk when we found them—two old stones, bare­ly read­able: Mary Liv­ingston and Robert Beat­tie.” The two Irish immi­grants, the object of Elnora’s search, lay before them.

 But Elnora’s reac­tion to the dis­cov­ery astound­ed both broth­er and sis­ter. “If I knew which vein in my body ran the blood that came from Ire­land, I would cut it out!” she exclaimed, in an emo­tion­al out­burst. Tom and Bet­ty were tak­en aback. “It was such an odd excla­ma­tion com­ing from a woman whose nor­mal behav­ior was that of an open-mind­ed woman, nev­er speak­ing in a prej­u­diced way,” said Betty. 

On the way home, Elno­ra explained that her father was an Orange­man and hat­ed the Irish. It was a deep-seat­ed prej­u­dice.  Elno­ra remem­bered bring­ing home a sham­rock as a child and hav­ing her father order its removal from the house imme­di­ate­ly. “Who knows what sto­ries lay behind such strong emo­tions?” said Bet­ty, who began who own research into the Orange­men and the Irish. 

“I was intrigued by the fam­i­ly sto­ries,” said Bet­ty, “and Elno­ra was eager to tell them. There were lots of rel­a­tives still liv­ing in the area, and I began vis­it­ing them, ask­ing them to tell me the sto­ries. I encour­age oth­ers to do the same with their fam­i­ly, because these fam­i­ly mem­bers have since passed. Do it now, before they are gone,” she said seriously.

Sens­ing Betty’s excite­ment, her hus­band Bill did a sur­pris­ing thing. He came home with a gift for her, an Ancestry.com CD enti­tled Fam­i­ly Tree Mak­er . She was two years from retir­ing, so she tucked it away on a shelf, but when she retired in 1999, she redis­cov­ered it. The CD opens with a sim­ple win­dow . “It’s amaz­ing,” she said, dis­miss­ing the count­less hours and cor­ri­dors it has led her down with a ges­ture, “how quick­ly I was off and running.”

Of the many hours of research, she said, “It’s like you are a detec­tive solv­ing a mys­tery puz­zle. Some­times, you run up against a brick wall but months lat­er you will find a clue and you’re off again. Many of the con­nec­tions come from unex­pect­ed sources. Cana­di­an fam­i­ly mem­bers, also work­ing on Ances­try. Com, have helped her solve many of them. 

“One of the seri­ous road­blocks I’ve expe­ri­enced,” said Bet­ty, is in Ire­land itself. “In the wars between the Eng­lish and the Irish, the records were burned. I can get no fur­ther back than Mary Liv­ingston and Robert Beat­tie, the same two who start­ed my search.” One can’t help but think the inhab­i­tants of the qui­et graves in St. James ceme­tery must be pleased that they start­ed an avalanche of paper that traces their sub­se­quent fam­i­ly in Amer­i­ca. Bet­ty has been work­ing at her fam­i­ly tree now for 11 years. “I’ve got­ten just about all that I can,” she said. 

The out­come of all those years of gath­er­ing is about to take flight. With instruc­tions from a com­pan­ion book,  Fam­i­ly Tree Mak­er, Bet­ty is about to embark on mak­ing a book. Along with the facts about the fam­i­ly, she has gath­ered pho­tos, sto­ries and anec­dotes that will add human inter­est to the book.  It’s a giant step for­ward from that lit­tle Ances­try. Com box on the com­put­er screen in which Bet­ty was first asked to place her name.

An invi­ta­tion: if you are inter­est­ed in get­ting start­ed on your own fam­i­ly tree, Bet­ty would be will­ing to lend a hand, encour­ag­ing you and steer­ing you in pos­si­ble direc­tions when you run into a road­block. Call the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety (802.684.2055) to set up an appoint­ment with her.

To view the pho­to album asso­ci­at­ed with this arti­cle, click here.

This arti­cle first appeared in the June issue of The North Star Month­ly.