As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this year, three Fullerton residents have traced their own histories back to the Revolutionary War-era and even farther.
Bob and Mary Jane Lent, married 61 years, and Dianne DeMille all live in the Morningside retirement community and have taken deep dives into their family histories, acquiring and preserving documents, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and other artifacts along the way.
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Bob Lent of Fullerton shows neighbor Dianne DeMille a color-coded chart chronicling birth, marriage, ancestral origins and death locations of his family’s lineage. Both Lent and DeMille have done extensive years-long research to trace their
families histories. (Lou Ponsi, Contributing Photographer)
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Bob Lent of Fullerton shows neighbor Dianne DeMille a color-coded chart chronicling birth, marriage, ancestral origins and death locations of his family’s lineage. Both Lent and DeMille have done extensive years-long research to trace their
families histories. (Lou Ponsi, Contributing Photographer)
Collectively, their revelations include stories of ancestors who descend from European royalty, crossed oceans, fought in the Civil War and lived on a Navajo reservation trading post.
“I just wanted to know where we came from,” said Bob Lent, who worked for 40 years in the aerospace industry before retiring. “Mom gave us a good start, but once I began digging, I realized how much more there was. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun.”
Lent began looking into his family history decades ago, after inheriting boxes of handwritten notes, birth records and carefully organized folders his mother kept over the years.
What started as a simple effort to understand his roots slowly morphed into a long-running project, with much of the research done without the benefit of today’s technology.
“At that time, you went to libraries,” he said. “There was no internet. You had to make phone calls or send away for the right documents. You had to prove everything. It was documentation.”
Bob and Mary Jane first met in New Mexico, where he was working in the aerospace field and where his future wife lived and worked as a schoolteacher.
As their relationship grew, they both learned that they had each been doing genealogy research on their own.
Over the years, they shared discoveries and compared notes, building a clearer picture of their families’ pasts.
“When Bob would find something, I’d sit with it for a while,” Mary Jane Lent said. “It made me feel connected to people I never met. It made me appreciate what they went through.”
He had also written a book, “Celebration of Our Ancestors’ Dreams,” a narrative-style history about his ancestors’ migration to America during the 1600s and 1700s.
Lent is in the process of penning a second book, which will be more of a chart-driven text, taken from detailed, color-coded charts he created showing birth, marriage and death locations and the national origins of each family line.
After selling their Fullerton home and moving a short distance to Morningside, Bob Lent continued the work and wrote about his genealogy project in the residents’ newsletter, hoping it might resonate with others.
“I said, OK, what are some of the questions people ask,” he said.
Lent and DeMille met recently after he saw her story in the community newsletter about her own family research.
“I’ve always been into history,” said DeMille, a former math teacher at two Orange County high schools, Mater Dei and Savannah, and a part-time professor at Cal State Fullerton.
DeMille, who is originally from Canada, has also gone back far enough to find royal ancestry on her mother’s side and a connection to filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille on her father’s side.
“My dad always talked about Cecil B. DeMille,” she said. “He was a fourth cousin.”
Her mother’s lineage traces back through European royalty, DeMille learning early French kings are her relatives.
DeMille also uncovered a remarkable family moment: her grandparents were invited to Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation, a story she preserved in a scrapbook filled with original letters, telegrams and photographs.
DeMille also designed large, easy-to-follow color-coded charts detailing the family history in a way that makes it easy for others to understand.
“I wanted to share it with my brothers. I have four younger brothers, and so I wanted to give them the information I found.”
With the array of genealogy platforms such as Ancestry.com out there and the availability of online databases containing public records, anyone can begin tracing their roots, even with scant information, the Morningside residents said.
Lent and DeMille agree that even one name — a parent, a grandparent, a rumor of a birthplace — is enough to start.
“You get a piece of the puzzle… from various places,” DeMille said.
Documenting one’s family history is the most reliable way to preserve a lineage long after memory begins to fade, Lent said.
“You just start with what you have,” he said. “When we’re gone, the library is closed.”