Stumbling into the Past

Part 1

Historical Serendipity at the Library

My research journey into my Haban roots started in the mid 1980s in a library near Rochester, New York. I was a young mom with a toddler and an infant and, in looking for an indoor diversion for the afternoon, stopped at the Henrietta Public Library after running errands in the area. As we entered the children's section play area, my infant son fell asleep in the stroller and my daughter headed for the puzzles and book cubbies. I sat nearby, trying to decide what I wanted to read with what seemed to me at that season of my life to be a large chunk of free time. I looked at the reference section shelf in back of where I was sitting and saw a set of encyclopedias. Its exact title I no longer remember, but it was some sort of encyclopedia of world religions. Sitting in the library, the word “Haban” now popped into my mind. I had had adult conversations with Grandma and Grandpa and Mom about our relatives in “Europe” over the years, but I still didn't know too much more than I did as a child about their history. My mom was then in the process of writing a book about her mother and father, but the Haban connection only gets a brief mention. Thinking I could find some information about them in the encyclopedia, I grabbed the H volume, looking for the entry for that word. I don't remember finding much information, just a reference to “Anabaptists”, which I then looked up in the corresponding volume. Only two bits of information from that entry impressed me enough to remain in my memory now. One was that Anabaptists was an umbrella term for all those post-Reformation Christians who didn't believe in baptizing infants. The second bit of information was that the Amish and Mennonites were present day descendants of the early Anabaptists.

With toddler still happily occupied in library-land, and infant still asleep in stroller, I ran over to the regular non-fiction section and grabbed a book entitled The Story of the Mennonites and settled into a comfy chair in the children's section. I skimmed through the chapters, looking for some reference to Habans or Czechoslovakia, finally coming upon a chapter about a religious group called the Hutterites who settled in Moravia, a “land” presently absorbed into the eastern half of the Czech Republic, lying on the western border with Slovakia. Grandpa, my mother's father, had come from a town near Moravia, so I started to read about the Hutterites. They were a sect of Anabaptists originally from Austria, but because of religious persecution, found themselves in a constant pattern of fleeing and resettling in towns in various places in eastern Europe. The book described a people who took God seriously, living good and holy lives in community. They were skilled craftsmen and artists, skilled farmers, and were a century ahead of their time in nursing practices, showing advanced ideas in the areas of hygiene and healthy living. Interesting, I thought. I could see many of these same Hutterite characteristics in Grandma and Grandpa...

At this point in my reading, infant son wakes up, toddler is getting bored, so I quickly shelve the book and head out to the car. Once outside the library doors, I have one of those moments I can only describe as a God-thing. I have a thought in my head that I don't expect and, frankly, I don't really want to have. “Go back and check out the book. There is much more in there you need to read.” This library is on the other side of the city from where we live, and taking this book out required (in those days) another trip across town to return it, not to mention the immediate problem of having to go back into the building with an infant and a toddler dangerously close to outstaying their welcome. Besides, I say to the thought in my head, I've read all the important interesting stuff. Still, the compulsion to check out the book is too strong, and so, with kids in tow, I head back inside to retrieve the book and head to the circulation desk.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. - Alex Haley

Tomorrow...

Stumbling into the Past

Part 2

Pullman and Cederle in Print