Love of genealogy leads to AU grad Allison Lawrentz Barnhart having book published

Ashland University graduate Allison Lawrentz Barnhart started writing her book in the past tense, but quickly changed that.

“I thought, ‘This is going to be boring – this happened and that happened, and I don’t want to do that,’” said Lawrentz Barnhart, describing how “The Record Keeper: The Unfolding of a Family Secret in the Age of Genetic Genealogy” began. “It’s so much of a deeper story than that.”

So, she switched to present tense as she described her research of her family history and discovering the family secret, making it more personal for her and the reader. 

“The reader goes along the journey with me finding out things, so they are just as shocked as I am every step of the way,” said Lawrentz Barnhart, who was happy with the switch for the book, which was published July 16 by Legacy Book Press LLC, and is available on Amazon.

Maybe this article also should make a big switch, from third person to first person point of view to make it more personal, too.

In the third person, it would include that Lawrentz Barnhart wrote her first book while she was also working full time as a graphic designer for a marketing business in Ashland and raising two children who are now 15 and 12 with her husband, Jason Barnhart, Th.D., assistant professor of historical theology at Ashland Theological Seminary, whom she met while they both attend AU as undergrads in the early 2000s. 

Staying in the third person, she eventually found a traditional publisher for her book – a small one in Iowa that allowed her to use her AU art degree and graphic design experience to design the cover and interior design, but also has its authors promote their own books.

“I’m actually excited to have this be done,” said Lawrentz Barnhart, who has enjoyed genealogy since she was in junior high. “I love it, but I have told the story and now I want to get back to researching more because I have had to stop that to promote this book.

“I’m excited to jump back into learning things,” added Lawrentz Barnhart, who has a website, The Record Keeper (allisonbarnhart.com), to fulfill her love of genealogy. “I write a blog on my website, writing ways to tell different family stories about ordinary people.”

While the background info about Lawrentz Barnhart is interesting; the rest of this article should be more enjoyable to read in first person. So, from now on, it will be a condensed summary of the book in her own words, kind of like Cliff Notes.

Just one more thing, though, to mention in third person: Lawrentz Barnhart’s publisher allows its authors to select a charity to receive 10% of book sales. While she said there are many worthy charities she could have chosen, she picked Pathfinder Farms because it seemed the most appropriate with her book.

Let’s not waste any more time getting to first person point of view and have Lawrentz Barnhart describe how she researched this family situation from the interview for this article:

A family mystery comes to light

2015 was when my dad had taken the original DNA test.

Then 2017 was when my now cousin Jennifer, who was a really close match to my dad, and I started talking and asking questions and realized something is really off here: We’re very closely related, and we don’t know each other, and you just live in Columbus and your family used to live in Mansfield. We were like “We have to figure this out.” That’s when it all unfolded.

The funny thing is she is only about two years older than me, and she grew up loving genealogy, too. Here we are, two young moms on Ancestry.com, and we’re finding each other. It was so great because were able to communicate so quickly and we both wanted to solve this little family mystery.

We did that for about two months, and then she brought up my maiden name, Lawrentz, and a couple of my family members’ names to her aunt, Linda, and surprisingly the aunt said, “I played with them when I was little.” She was one of seven sisters.

The mystery thickens

Since my grandma loved ancestry and all that, when she died in 2009, I was getting totes and boxes of pictures and scrapbooks and postcards. I was like, “I need to look through all this again because now I am looking for something very particular.” It was crazy the amount of things I found that linked to this family that we had zero idea existed.

My grandma took photos of our house, so I saw a photo of the house not sided, then a few years later, it’s all sided. Everything was coming together. I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, and I couldn’t look my dad in the eye. I had all this knowledge, but do I say it or not?

Mystery solved

Some photos I recognized and others I had never seen but knew the people and there were a handful that I didn’t know who these people were, but they looked like family. They were the daughters of Leon, the siding salesman; half-sisters of my dad, and I started sharing them with Jen, who said, “This is my mom and my aunts.”

There’s a lot of coincidences. The red hair is one. Leon had red hair, my dad had red hair, I have red hair, my daughter has red hair. We were like, “Where did this come from?” Sweden and the siding man.

We found one photo where my dad was with his real dad. He’s looking up at his real dad pushing him on a swing. Does he know this is his son?

When my dad was 2 years old, the other family moved to Columbus and the families never talked again.

That’s the hard part – a lot of people have passed away so you can’t ask a lot of questions.

The aftermath

I want to honor my grandmother. She had this rough life. She didn’t drive. I think it’s about her hoping for this 1950s, perfect, white-picket fence, small-town living, and her husband was abusive to her and the kids, and she was trapped. I’m like: “What would you do in this situation if someone is paying attention to you?”

My dad grew up knowing it was kind of crazy in his family so, when I sat down to tell him, I was anticipating he would say, “That can’t be, my mom was a saint.” But my mom and dad were like, “OK, a lot of things make sense now.” It was kind of redemptive and healing for him because he could let go of the fact that he wasn’t Phil’s son. He was named after that dad he thought was his dad, so he went by his middle name, Mike.

That guy we thought was his dad was not a good guy. He was an abusive person and my grandma and he divorced when my dad was 6, so there was never a connection there in the first place. I think it is harder when people find out the dad they were so close to isn’t their dad. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise; that it was a little less of a shock that way.