Here's the deal with genealogical research: Everyone is related to everyone, and we're not just related through the first humanoids who emerged from the primordial ooze millions of years ago, the proverbial Adam and Eve.
It's pretty amazing, but a common ancestor for every human being now alive probably died not more than two thousand years ago.
For people of European ancestry (or any other ethnic group), the common ancestor is even closer - around 600 or 700 years ago. We're all descended from Charlemagne.
This doesn't mean some lady had a giant passel of fecund kids, it just means family lines die off, intermarry, and migrate. Though mathematically I would have 1028 ninth great-grandparents, the actual number is quite a lot smaller, though I haven't done enough research yet to figure out how much smaller.
If you're related to me, I can prove you are related to both Dick Cheney and Barack Obama through my Grandpa Lewis. I can also prove you are related to George W. Bush, FDR, and Sarah Palin through Pompo's line. Obama, Bush, Palin, and FDR are tenth or twentieth cousins of me, and of each other. That level of cousinage is essentially meaningless.
But here's the other deal with genealogical research: It does not matter to me that I mathematically have around 1028 ninth great-grandparents. It matters to me that they are my great-grandparents. They birthed, and most of them raised, my 512 eighth great-grandparents, who birthed and raised my 256 seventh great-grandparents; etc., until we get to my four grandparents, all of whom I adored, and all of whom adored me.
I look back up the line, and I think my experience probably was mostly - not entirely, but mostly - how it was, all the way back. I love all of my ninth great-grandmothers and -grandfathers because my mother and father loved me, and Nana and Pompo and Grandma and Grandpa loved them, and their parents loved them, and so thank you. My 9th ggrandmothers loved me forward, and I love them back.
A second reason I care: these ancestors, and I mean down to close to modern day, faced challenges we can only imagine. We're talking horrifying, primitive medical care, long sea voyages in leaky, filthy, rat-ridden tubs, brutal and repressive religious colonies, horrific bloody wars, crops failing, Indian attacks. Drowning, starving, tomahawks, childbirth; oh heavens, childbirth. It was a leading cause of death among young women until not that long ago. Women bearing a dozen or more children, with many babies dying in infancy or a few years old - old enough to have been well and truly adored by those around them, so that the losses were great, heartbreaking things.
I would say we are here by the skin of our teeth, but that gives too much credit to luck. Mostly we are here because our ancestors were brave, sturdy, adventurous people who escaped the Old World and would not give up in the New.
That's who we came from.
Big shout out. You guys did a great job. I'm proud of you.
No comments:
Post a Comment