Who do you think you are?

How much do you know about where you came from? 

I'm talking big picture here, not what you know about your home town or state. Genealogically. 

Most of us know stories that have been passed down. We know that our grandmother's family has Irish roots, for example, and that our several-greats-grandfather fought in the continental army or that our great-grandmother's cousin just disappeared and there was never any trace of him after the Crash of '29.

But how much do we really know about our ancestors? 

I am a bit of a genealogy nut--most of my family seems to be--and I have an ancestry.com account, which has proved most interesting to peruse. But all I know are names and some dates--I don't know anything about the kind of people they were, what they liked or disliked. They had children--were they good parents? Did she have a special recipe that she made at Christmas? Did he have a hobby like whittling or playing the guitar? Were there places she always wanted to see? Did he secretly dream of being a pilot? Did she speak out about suffrage or temperance? Did he mourn when Lincoln was assassinated? People often tell each other that we are just like our parents, but what if we're really more similar to our great-great-great-grandparents and we just don't know it?

I read a book last week called How to Hang a Witch. It takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, in modern times and was written by Adriana Mather. Is that ringing anyone's bell? Salem...Mather? The author of this book is a descendant of Cotton Mather, the man who had a very prominent role in the Salem Witch Trials. She mentioned in her "Author's Note" that when she went to Salem to do research for the novel, someone told her that she wouldn't be very popular in town with that last name. In the book, the main character is also a descendant of Mather, and the main group of antagonists are descendants of the executed witches. It's a pretty good book--the author's first novel. 

But the book really made me think about the past and the role our ancestors played in it. At one point in the story, the main character, Sam, is told by another character that she can't beat herself up for what Cotton Mather did. That seems like something many people in our world today need to hear and take to heart. The things our ancestors did--right or wrong--are not our mistakes. Can we right the wrongs? In some ways, yes, but in the same way that I did not do what my ancestor did, whatever was done to my ancestor was not done to me. The past is, in fact, the past, and the only way to better the future is to learn from the past, not try to fix it. It's done.

The book also made me want to dig deeper into my family history--really dig, not just trust the scanned documents that appear on Ancestry. Hunt down the birth certificates and death certificates and census records and passenger manifests and connect the dots and give life to those names. It really gives you a different perspective when you can picture your ancestors as living and breathing people. For example, an ancestor on my mom's side, Braxton Mabry, fought in the American Revolution {my family members did the research so we could join the DAR}. He committed treason, essentially. If the war had been lost, who knows what would have happened to him, and thus, to me? That short story we all had to read in high school, A Sound of Thunder, takes on a whole new meaning.

A cousin of mine recently had one of those DNA tests done, and part of the results were a bit startlingly. Ever since I can remember, we had been told one of those stories I mentioned earlier--that my great-great-grandfather had married a Cherokee woman. Well, in the DNA test? No trace of Native American. Dave and I are second cousins {I had to check how all that works to make sure I denoted it correctly}. We share great-grandparents. Our grandfathers were brothers. Ever since he posted the results of his test on Facebook, I have been intrigued. There are two generations between us and the DNA we share 100%...how different would my results be? You have to factor in my grandmother and his grandmother, then my mom and his mom--only 25% of our DNA came from those shared great-grandparents. That's a lot of DNA left! And, if I took a DNA test like this and my first cousin took it, too, how different would our results be? I mean, 50% of our heritage should be the same. AND THEN, where did that story come from? I mean, did his first wife die and then he married a Cherokee but they never had children? That could explain the lack of DNA, but what if that isn't the case? Then where did that story come from? Because on that same side of the family, there is a supposed connection to Anne Boleyn...Henry VIII's second wife, and that story sounds even less plausible than the first! 

{I also apologize if I incorrectly used "DNA" when I should have used "heritage"...when I said "DNA", I was meaning that our DNA came from that shared link...I also am aware that the percentages might not be completely accurate in that DNA doesn't exactly work that way...the numbers were just good visuals, if you will...YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEANT!!!}

Anyway, just something for you to ponder. If you ever get a chance to even just use a free trial of a genealogy software, I highly recommend you give it a try.

~Stay Gold!