Genealogy buff Izetta Clegg loved family, past and present
Saturday, February 25, 2006 11:28 PM PST
By Barbara LaBoe
Printable version
E-mail this articleIzetta Clegg's fascination with researching her ancestors ended up helping numerous area residents find their own roots.
Clegg, a 58-year Castle Rock resident, died Feb. 12 at the age of 87 after her second bout with colon cancer.
She was one of the co-founders of the Lower Columbia Genealogical Society and helped create what became the genealogical section in the Longview Public Library. The books that Clegg once transported in the trunk of her car now number more than 2,000 volumes, said Rose Janke, a fellow co-founder.
The two women met in the Longview Public Library in 1958 when both were researching their ancestors. In that time before copy machines and computers, that meant laborious hand-copying, walking cemeteries to record dates and sending away for books from other libraries.
Within a few years they had joined forces with fellow genealogists Mildred Richardson and John Gerhart and formed the genealogical society in 1964. Clegg served as the society's second president and Janke said the group always benefitted from her leadership and organizational skills.
Genealogical research can be tedious, but Janke said they relished the chance to learn something new about their family trees. Clegg, Janke and Gerhart all had ancestors in the same section of Pennsylvania, so they frequently joined forces to strategically order more books through inter-library loans.
"We could only keep them for 10 days, so when they would come in the three of us would rush over there and practically sit on each other's laps trying to copy out of those books," Janke said.
Clegg published her research on both her own family and her husband's, tracing them both back to colonial times, Janke said. She believes Clegg's love of history, and her own growing family, sparked her interest in tracing her family tree.
"When you get to the point where your children are grown and you start looking at grandchildren then you begin to say 'I want to leave them a heritage,' " Janke said. "So then you start digging up the ancestors."
Her son David, the eldest of four boys, said family was the center of his mother's life. Many of her other outside interests -- such as Cub Scouts and the Lower Columbia Woodcarvers Association --- had family connections.
"She truly loved us," he said. "Of course we had our ups and downs as we grew up, but she always bounced back and fourth with us."
While her ancestors captured Clegg's imagination, her own life had its interesting moments.
She worked in a Nebraska ammunition plant during World War II in a job whose dangers were driven home when the plant blew up one day. Clegg wasn't on shift at the time.
She moved to Castle Rock in 1948 because her second husband, F. Williard Clegg, had a brother working in the area.
The couple started a tradition of a large family pizza party for Christmas dinners, something the entire family looked forward to, David Clegg said. With four children, 10 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, the parties always drew quite a crowd.
"The last couple of years they didn't have them because it was too much of a strain," David Clegg said. "But we had one after the service in her honor."
In addition to her numerous offspring, Janke said Clegg's legacy will live on through her giving nature and the society she helped found.
"She was a good contributor to our community," Janke said. "She never did seek glory for herself, it was always for the good of whatever purpose she was working on."
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