Post by elalacran on Apr 4, 2012 11:26:35 GMT -5
Before I got kicked off the other forum I started posting about genealogy, which I got into very late, only toward the end of 2011.
It's been interesting.
But I do have the kind of personality that finds it interesting. I see the world in terms of processes, and my first approach to any subject is historical. Like a character in one of Clif Simak's sci-fi stories, I look out at a landscape where cattle are grazing and see them overlaid on a prior landscape where dinosaurs once grazed and hunted. To me, the present contains the past.
My mother, age 100, considers genealogy a waste of time. "How much were you paid to do that?" she asked when I showed her a couple of pages of my conclusions. She doesn't care to hear about most ancestors, being semi-orphaned at birth and raised by relatives who ranged between stern and abusive.
My one grandparent whose ancestors I have determined to be Massachusetts Puritans my mother did not care for at all, and my mother's memories of that person are synonymous with cruelty.
The only member of my father's family that my mother met when she got married she remembers only for a slight -- for asking my mother to repay a loan made to my father some time before the marriage.
Me, I am removed from all that, and am willing to accept that my ancestors were less than heroes, and that the most "heroic" had feet of clay.
The attraction for me is in the connection to history, the migrations, the economic hardships and opportunities, whatever view there is of how those people lived and died.
It's not a matter of finding a famous ancestor; i don't think that was a consideration, and neither have I found any-- not very famous anyway. My ancestors apear to have been bit players on the stage, crowd scenes, a few speaking parts, but no leads.
One surprise is how early most came to the New World. I never expected to find ancestors in Virginia by the 1620s, or in Massachusetts by 1637-39, or Rhode Island by 1638-39, or New Jersey before 1700. Or Texas before 1840.
There was a family named Barron who probably arrived in Georgia from Ireland after 1800, but they are the most recent immigrants I found. Not that the genealogy is anywhere near complete.
Ethnicities were not a surprise. Everybody seems to have been English, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, German, or Swiss-German, with a little uncertainty about some individuals who could have been Indian or African. or not. I had heard about Dutch ancestry and have not identified any as distinct from German.
Some of the German names are not uncommonly Jewish, such as Goldschmitt, Goldman, Eisenmann, Bachmann, Gould. Perhaps one name -- Dagan -- is said to come from the Hebrew. But I cannot claim with certainty to have Jewish ancestors. Darn; no Cohens or Levys.
A couple of names might have come from the French. Uzzel is said to come from oiseau; Cloyes might be derived from Clois. The ancestors of Ann Veare, wife of Stephen Gates who immigrated to Massachusetts about 1638, could be French. All guesswork.
I don't know how many came to America as indentured servants. I'd guess quite a few.
I don't know how many were slaveowners; I guess a number, in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, possibly in Texas. Some owned plantations on which the family lived for generations. Others were farmers and stockmen. The largest landowner, up to 120k acres, was a Quaker, and might not have owned slaves himself, but I am not placing money either way.
Probably many of my ancestors were too poor to have owned slaves. Most of the others, if they did own slaves, likely worked alongside them as small landowners did since ancient times; there is something to be said for that.
It's been interesting.
But I do have the kind of personality that finds it interesting. I see the world in terms of processes, and my first approach to any subject is historical. Like a character in one of Clif Simak's sci-fi stories, I look out at a landscape where cattle are grazing and see them overlaid on a prior landscape where dinosaurs once grazed and hunted. To me, the present contains the past.
My mother, age 100, considers genealogy a waste of time. "How much were you paid to do that?" she asked when I showed her a couple of pages of my conclusions. She doesn't care to hear about most ancestors, being semi-orphaned at birth and raised by relatives who ranged between stern and abusive.
My one grandparent whose ancestors I have determined to be Massachusetts Puritans my mother did not care for at all, and my mother's memories of that person are synonymous with cruelty.
The only member of my father's family that my mother met when she got married she remembers only for a slight -- for asking my mother to repay a loan made to my father some time before the marriage.
Me, I am removed from all that, and am willing to accept that my ancestors were less than heroes, and that the most "heroic" had feet of clay.
The attraction for me is in the connection to history, the migrations, the economic hardships and opportunities, whatever view there is of how those people lived and died.
It's not a matter of finding a famous ancestor; i don't think that was a consideration, and neither have I found any-- not very famous anyway. My ancestors apear to have been bit players on the stage, crowd scenes, a few speaking parts, but no leads.
One surprise is how early most came to the New World. I never expected to find ancestors in Virginia by the 1620s, or in Massachusetts by 1637-39, or Rhode Island by 1638-39, or New Jersey before 1700. Or Texas before 1840.
There was a family named Barron who probably arrived in Georgia from Ireland after 1800, but they are the most recent immigrants I found. Not that the genealogy is anywhere near complete.
Ethnicities were not a surprise. Everybody seems to have been English, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, German, or Swiss-German, with a little uncertainty about some individuals who could have been Indian or African. or not. I had heard about Dutch ancestry and have not identified any as distinct from German.
Some of the German names are not uncommonly Jewish, such as Goldschmitt, Goldman, Eisenmann, Bachmann, Gould. Perhaps one name -- Dagan -- is said to come from the Hebrew. But I cannot claim with certainty to have Jewish ancestors. Darn; no Cohens or Levys.
A couple of names might have come from the French. Uzzel is said to come from oiseau; Cloyes might be derived from Clois. The ancestors of Ann Veare, wife of Stephen Gates who immigrated to Massachusetts about 1638, could be French. All guesswork.
I don't know how many came to America as indentured servants. I'd guess quite a few.
I don't know how many were slaveowners; I guess a number, in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, possibly in Texas. Some owned plantations on which the family lived for generations. Others were farmers and stockmen. The largest landowner, up to 120k acres, was a Quaker, and might not have owned slaves himself, but I am not placing money either way.
Probably many of my ancestors were too poor to have owned slaves. Most of the others, if they did own slaves, likely worked alongside them as small landowners did since ancient times; there is something to be said for that.