Melissa Bauer
2003
Pound Ridge, NY
When my grandmother, Catherine Guerci, brought to my attention this scholarship, I assumed that I would be writing an essay about my family tree. Since my grandmother had completed her own genealogy project before I was even born, I look to her for guidance as I searched through my vast family tree. She gave me a book written by Emily F. Leavitt Noyes, titled Descendants of Thomas Leavitt, the Immigrant 1616-1696, and Isabelle Bland. I followed my grandmother's markings throughout the book, and two hundred and sixty pages later I came across her name, the names of her brothers and sisters and even the name of a son of one of my grandmother's brothers. Before I read this book, I thought that I had a very large family. With my grandmother's five siblings, their children and their children's children, family events were always on a rather enormous scale of well over 200 people. When I reached the last page of the book, the page listed my grandmother, I thought to myself, "Where's my mom, my uncle John and my aunt Linda? What about cousin Lynn and cousin Billy and their children and everyone else in my mother's generation? At first, it seemed that the author had forgotten to include many people, but then I understood that I was forgetting a piece of my heritage, a much large part. I had always seen my grandmother and her siblings as the beginning of the chain of Leavitt's. When my grandmother was part of the tenth generation, the last generation listed in the book, I realized the true, grand size of my family heritage. The people that I became acquainted with through this book, were some of the country's bravest people, who settled the land, witnessed the dawn of our country and the changing times of almost four centuries. Just as my ancestors had numerous obstacles to overcome when forming a new country, my peers and I have many hurdles to conquer in the present day state of our nation and the world. My Leavitt heritage connects me to the past struggles of our country and gives me hope for future generations of successful Leavitt and Americans in the United States.
