Our Kurtz Heritage - INTRODUCTION

Note - this was written in 2017. 
Blog date has been set earlier to place this where I want it within the other posts.

When I was growing up, the oldest person I knew was my great-grandmother, Gertrude Anna Kurtz.  She was born 18 July 1881 in London, Ohio.  As I write this today in 2017, it seems strange to me that I actually knew someone who was alive in that bygone era. I can only imagine what it must have been like for her to see so many changes– from horse drawn buggies to astronauts flying to the moon.  

The pace of change in this world has accelerated considerably over the ensuing decades, with advancing technology and shifting social standards.  The world we live in today is scarcely recognizable compared to what things were like when my great-grandmother was a young girl.  Each new generation must confront challenges and opportunities quite different from those that went before.  Still, I believe there is tremendous value in looking back to the generations that preceded us, holding on to the lessons learned from their life experiences.

For much of my life I have had a passion for family history.  I have spent a great deal of time doing traditional genealogy, tracing back the history of each line of my family tree as far as there were documents to find.  With this book, however, I decided to go the other direction.  I began with stories about Emery and Gertrude Kurtz, my great-grandparents, recording what I knew about their heritage.  I then traced their downstream posterity for five generations, documenting the lives of their children, grandchildren and beyond.  By gathering pictures and stories of each person who was willing to share them, from my grandmother and her siblings on down to my own children and grandchildren, I tried to establish a clearer understanding of the larger story of our family as a whole.

From 2014-2016, my husband and I served a Family History Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Pacific Area.  We lived in Auckland, New Zealand, but also traveled extensively throughout the surrounding island nations, teaching people how to use the church’s web based genealogy program “FamilySearch” in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa and Niue.  While we were in Samoa, we had an opportunity to be taught by Steve Rockwood, who at that time was the International Manager for FamilySearch.  In an assembly to Samoan high school students, Brother Rockwood taught the lesson of the Bow Tie.  He spoke about how each of us can be a uniting force in our family.  One way we do that is by learning all we can about our ancestors and making a record so they will not be forgotten.  But equally important is being an influence for good among our living family members and the generations to come after.  We do this through building strong family relationships and setting a positive example in how we conduct our lives.

He talked about how honoring family in both directions can bless us.  Just as the knot in a bow tie holds together the two sides that extend outward, we can become the knot in our family group by bringing living relatives together and sharing the stories of the past.  It was a powerful talk.  

Ever since that time, I have had an interest in gathering family records about all the cousins and kin who have scattered out from the six children of Emery and Gertrude Kurtz who lived to adulthood and had families of their own.  My purpose is to do what I can to ensure that we do not forget the bonds of family that tie us together. 

It is my hope that through sharing this book with members of my family, we can all be reminded of the importance of looking back, holding tight to the lessons gleaned from our ancestor’s lives.  Yet we can also look forward, striving to build a legacy of love and strength for our posterity through the power of family stories.

Steve Rockwood teaching the “bow tie” analogy
Pasenga College – Apia, Samoa March 2015

Lynda Bennett
Prescott, Arizona

For questions or corrections, please contact me at lyndajbennett@msn.com