A Death in the Family of a Genealogist

On Monday 4 Aug, 2014, my maternal grandfather Lewis Henry Hewitt passed away.  The death was not unexpected, and all the family had a chance to say goodbye. He had been quite ill with cancer for some time, and he wasn't exactly a spring chicken either!

Lewis Hewitt 1932-2014

Deaths in the family are always difficult, and genealogists then have to update all their profiles for the person to reflect the recent death.  This actually feels really weird to do.  You would think entering death dates a million times would take a bit of the sting out of it, but honestly it was an emotional time for me.  I have done this so far in my desktop program, then on Geni, and then on my main Ancestry.com member tree, and in at least one page of this blog. Today, I realized that I had not updated his WikiTree profile.

I am very fortunate to have been able to have his DNA tested at 23andMe.  I was also fortunate to have been able to ask him many questions about his family and life years ago when I started doing genealogy. Unfortunately, my children really didn't get to know their great grandfather before he passed away.  Also, unfortunately, he didn't tell all the stories he should have to his children.  Now, things are surfacing that he should really have explained before he left this world.  

His ashes were committed to the Niagara River with the ashes of my grandmother Doreen Knox.