Family Genealogy and Stuff...

It's a sunny Monday, 25 degrees out, and something spent a lot of time on my patio last night. Whatever the something was, it had both kits looking out the window and the door off and on all night long. I looked out, myself, a couple of times, but never saw anything except leaves blowing around. Both kits spent a good deal of time this morning sniffing the edges, legs, and seats of my three rattan chairs that stay on the patio - but I haven't a clue as to what was out there. It could have been a raccoon, fox, cat, or skunk - who knows....

  Yesterday I watched the Broncos game, then the Jets game, and, finally, the Texans game. The Jets lost, but the other two teams won; and the Saints beat the Falcons - so I had an enjoyable day of football. And I didn't put a toe outside my doors... had on warm, woolly socks; blue Gators sweatpants, and a long-sleeved orange Broncos shirt - a nice way to spend a day where the high temperature was all of 29!

  I'm doing some genealogy research for family members, and I need to get back into transcribing the family tree onto the web. I must say that in following my family tree, I have found some very interesting connections, and have run across some memorable names... My sister likes Marmaduke de Thwang, a very old Norman ancestor in England; I still like Hepzibah Starbuck Hussey, and, in Jim Snow's family, Eliphalet Pease. Seeing that I am distant cousins with Presidents Franklin Pierce and Grover Cleveland had me delve into their histories; and finding the same distant cousin connection to James Dean and Mary Ann Mobley had me viewing films.

  One of the things that fascinates me most about genealogy is that how there seems to be the tale of an "Indian princess" marrying into the family in a majority of family stories. The most usual tale is that it was a Cherokee maiden who married outside the tribe, and completely gave up the Native American lifestyle. I have had ten genealogy clients who were very certain that this was true. I told each of them from the outset of my research that I would only report what I could document - I was able to trace all ten clients' families back to England, Scotland, or Ireland - and none of them had a Native American in the family tree. Now, I admit that there are gaps in histories, especially in the South where a lot of records were destroyed by fire during the Civil War - but I always note that fact. My mother told me that we might have some Indian blood in her side of the family - but that it would be Native Americans native to the Eastern Shore peninsula, if it was true. I have not been able to verify any Indian blood there. My father told me (as he had been told) that his mother, whose surname was Lancaster, traced her family tree back to John of Gaunt; and that his father's family had "some Cherokee" in it... Grandma Grace's Lancaster ancestor was a man of French descent (according to the National Geographic genome program), who had lived in England, and then moved to Virginia. Dad's family can be traced back to John of Gaunt, but on his paternal side, not maternal.  And there is a possibility that we have some Native American blood on his side of the family - but I'll write about that tomorrow.