Submitted by isthisthemiddle on February 10, 2012 - 10:06am Flipping open the American Heritage College Dictionary for inspiration, the word PEDIGREE caught my eye.
PEDIGREE: a line of ancestors; a lineage. A family tree. A chart of an individual’s ancestors used in human genetics to analyze Mendelian inheritance, esp. of familial diseases. From Middle English, from Latin: pe de grue, foot of crane, the resemblance of a crane’s foot to the lines of succession on a genealogical chart.*
Genealogy is a little hobby of mine. I’ve listened to family stories, wondering….
Grandmother Anna Christiana fed hungry train-riding hobos out her back door near the railroad tracks in the 1930s. Grandfather Rudy, the baker from Alsace, made bread for the Union Army during the Civil War.
Grandmother Matilda had a child out of wedlock as a teenager in the 1840s. The father forever unknown, the child became Granddad Piper; he grew up strong enough to crush a clam in his fist. Grumpy Little Grannie, Nancy Payne, lied about her age to the census man, smoked a pipe, and lived to be 92.
The Old Gentleman, Thomas Leary, had a flowing white mustache in his last photo. He emigrated from County Wexford, Ireland, married a widowed woman with a child, and frittered her money away buying rounds for his buddies in Philadelphia saloons.
Gran Sadie, a white woman, raised an orphaned black child as her own, in the South, around 1900. Her husband Charles was famous for the quality of his cured hams; a smokehouse full of his hams was better than money in the bank. He guarded them with a shotgun and shot his own shadow on the barn one night, thinking it was a ham-thief.
Gramps Richard emigrated from England, c. 1670. He was an indentured servant who gained his freedom and died a land-owner, a tobacco planter. Aside from a house and acreage, his last will and testament distributed livestock, pewter plates, candlesticks, and feather beds among his many children.
No trace of a house remains at the site he farmed 300 years ago, on Gargatha Creek, Virginia. Nearby, in the silent winter marsh, cranes catch small menhaden fish, as they have for thousands of years.
Yes. Pedigree. A crane’s foot, a very gnarled, clawed, bumpy, crane’s foot.
*The American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Melanie
SunbonnetSmart.com What a find that you discovered the postcard of the boat and the menu! So much is out there if we poke around a bit.
My mother just received a treasure trove in the mail from a cousin--photos and letters, some 100 years old. We're still going through them. They are just humble items from the family, but I get such a thrill to hold a letter that my great-grandmother held. She died in the flu pandemic of 1918, and I've always wished I could have known her.
This was great. What a diverse family you have and such great story snippets to describe them. My mother's family came to the US from Russia in the early 1900s when my Grandfather was kicked out for rabble rousing. Fortunately, my Grandmother's family had a little money. My Dad's family came from the Ukraine around the same time. Not much to learn there except what was passed down in stories. Now, my husband's family can trace themselves to the US before the Revolution (I feel kind of uppity even saying that.) In fact, his family is related to Benjamin Franklin. CRAZY!! They have RECORDS, or as you would say, a PEDIGREE. I, on the other hand, am a mutt!!
elaineR.N. My research has convinced me we are all mutts, even if we are related to Kings, Czars, or Ben Franklin (love that man-- his biography is priceless)!
isthisthemiddle I think I will read Ben's Bio. He is one of my favorite's too.
elaineR.N. I should have said his autobiography. He was such a trip-- and a great writer. But I'd like to read a biography of him, too, to see what an outside observer has to say.
elaineR.N. As am I. A mutt, too!! lol! ;)
What a grand pedigree you have! My great -grandfather robbed a bank and went to prison. He was broke, the bank got robbed and all the sudden he spent money like crazy. I've always appreciated dumb criminals because they make my job easier but having one in the linage is an entirely different matter. Wish I knew him:-)
Bad Luck Detective Definitely some ne'er-do-wells in everyone's tree! Thanks for the story about the bank-robbing grandpa. One thing's for sure, we all come from survivors!
Bad Luck Detective HA! Such a cute thought, Suzie!
On my mother's side the great aunts and my grand mother were all very secretive about the past that it intrigues me to dig a little deeper. I am just nervous about the skeletons I might find...
victorias_view Every family has skeletons, and we have to take what we find with a grain of salt, too. I'm kind of a history geek, so I enjoy thinking about all the difficulties our ancestors had to overcome, especially the women.
isthisthemiddle It's amazing the obstacles many have overcome in the face of diversity. Now I have the sudden urge to dig...
isthisthemiddlevictorias_view Yes...love it all, warts and all...
victorias_view Skeletons are fun!
I wish I would know more about my ancestors, but maybe I should be afraid to find out too much. lol! I think this hobby of yours, Genealogy, is a very cool and even intriguing thing to do.
It is really amazing that you have been able to find out so much. Wow! You have traced back a long way. That is very impressive, and so wonderful to know as much about your family as you do. What a sense of belonging it must give you.
Did you find diaries or did you go on a quest? And how long did finding all this out take you? If I am being too nosy, please forgive and do not answer. No offense will be taken. :)
I really loved this post, Melanie, it is like a good history class!
Much love and BIG hugs,
HomeRearedChef No offense at all. The one branch was easy, it's an unusual last name, and other family members (ones I have never met) had already done so much work on the tree and posted it on the internet. It was just waiting there for me to find. Most of the stories are ones that my grandmother, cousins, and aunts told me when I was a girl.
The searching that I have personally done has been harder, and many branches I can only go back a generation or two. They are posting old census records online now. It was fun to see that some of my grandmothers lied about their ages when the census man came calling.
I don't take it too seriously since who knows when records (or memories) were mistaken, but one thing I've learned is we don't have to go back very far to see how many of us are related to each other! I'm sure we are at least cousins, Virginia! :)
isthisthemiddle I have often been tempted to REALLY write about my mother's childhood, but she is afraid of his family coming to do us harm. My mother's step father was the treasurer of El Salvador for many years, and they were very corrupt. My mother was swindled out of her inheritance. Sigh!
My uncle actually has family living here in the United State. But sometimes I want to DARE to write about it. Hubby thinks I should. But I am still not sure. Sigh!
HomeRearedChef That is a dilemma. I don't know what I would do under those circumstances!
isthisthemiddle Well, I am still thinking and debating.... Sigh!
HomeRearedChef One day you'll write a tell-all. Or a tell-most? We have to hold a few things back. ;)
HomeRearedChefisthisthemiddle Oh! Write it down...who knows what tomorrow holds...but, wait to publish...don't let it fritter away!
LOVE genealogy! There is so much out there, you won't believe it until you go looking. I have a girlfriend whose grandmother came into the port of Baltimore in 1903 on a German boat. I was able to find a postcard of the boat and a menu from 1905 on eBay to give her. I had been telling her there is MUCH more out there than you would imagine, but she wasn't convinced until I sent her the postcard and menu. Now she takes genealogical tours to Lithuania where her grandmother grew up. So cool...it's all worth the trouble. When you find a nugget...it makes your day. And www.tribalpages.com is a WONDERFUL free website where all of your data can be stored out of harm's way. For about $30/year, you can get the deluxe services if you like. Thanks for a FUN, sharing and informative post, Melanie. Fondly, Robin
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