In which I go on Ancestry.com:
Sometime ago, I first became aware of the online family tree builder and genealogical research tool, Ancestry.com. Some friends and relatives had been using it before me, probably more people than I could actually list, and key genealogists on both my father’s and my mother’s side were becoming knowledgeable about our family tree, tracing it far back, perhaps, for all I knew, back to the time of Jesus Himself.
So far no one has turned out to be his descendant.
Okay the truth is, they did not actually trace the tree back to the time of Christ.
But We Are Claimed to be Related to Some Famous People
What an extended family member from my father’s side did do was claim that we were descendants of Robert the Bruce (1274-1339). You might remember him, he was the leader of the Scottish rebellion in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.
We were also, it was said, descended from Charlemagne (748-824).
At the time this came out (at the Linder Family Reunion in the mid 2000-aughts) the revelation was taken with a massive grain of salt (my father, who was still living at the time, said he was willing to consider the Robert the Bruce claim, but that records on the Charlemagne descendancy were, historiographically, relatively speculative and weak). Although as we all know, when you go far enough back, ancestors may have many, many descendants.
There’s really no reason that everyday people like us could not be one 1 millionth Robert the Bruce. Actually, if you assume that in each generation, the number of descendants doubles, there would be about 1 billion descendants of a person who lived at the time of the Magna Carta (1215).
In all seriousness …
… of the making of many family trees there is no end. This tree-making has been going on a long time, and if you look, you’ll find that the Bible itself has a number of them in it. I’m a fairly busy person, and up until now despite my interest in genealogy, I had been satisfied with learning family tree information from family members.
Our Family Genealogists
There are several important sources I have access to, such as a family tree my mother received from her sister, and the self-published book, High Expectations, written by my uncle and my father. I also have a few other items, including the regimental historian’s report from the unit of my great-grandfather, who died in World War I, which detailed the information we have about his demise, and a 10 page typewritten biography of my great-grandfather created by his granddaughter as a school project. I also have a lot of old pictures.
There’s Plenty of Information
These sources provided me with plenty of information and I have reviewed them sufficiently that I could tell you, off the cuff, the surnames of each of my great grandparents’ families. I can also remember their basic origins, a few family stories of note ( including the story of The Name Susan Taylor Brand after whom this blog is named ) and a general idea of how long each branch of the family tree had been in the US.
For the most part, the immigration of our latest arriving ancestors was between 1840 and 1880. It was said that other members of the family had been here since the very beginning of European arrival in North America that is, 1620 (Jamestown settlement, dating from 1607, was actually earlier but there are no descendants from the Jamestown settlement; all were all lost. Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.)
And Then I Get Involved
But just yesterday, I received an email from a close relative who had purchased an ancestry family account and who offered me the chance to get in on this interesting Ancestry App. Well.
Since it was summer, I had plenty of time. I said “sign me up!” And I logged on. Immediately I was sucked in by the appearance of a family tree, my own, slowly being built as I found and approved of each ancestor as a valid link.
What was more, as I went farther up (or back) on/in the tree, there were additional details which had been approved by other researchers. In particular, people had found newspaper articles. There were documents of all sorts: birth records, death records, marriage records, census records! Pictures. Apparently other people, people I did not even know, were researching these same ancestors.
I Guess This Should Be No Surprise.
But somehow it was. Lots of people are researching! A good friend told me this weekend when I was visiting California that he was actually the 9th cousin of Leo the 14th. How did he know? A family member was on Ancestry.com! And I could see how, with software like this, such determinations are the very sort of thing you might find out, which you would never have known otherwise.
On My Own (Sapling-Sized) Family Tree
I got to the level of my great-grandfather on my tree and looked at his documents and here was something very interesting: an application to the Sons of the American Revolution! Handwritten into a record book, dated December 15, 1917. Who knew? And there were the names of two revolutionary ancestors I had never heard of before.
What else could there be on this massive database?
The Birth of a Data Center in Iowa
My son, the welder, texted me this morning that he is in Iowa. Why is the Texas Welder in Iowa? Apparently he’s building, along with a great number of other people, a data center. Now just a few hours before the Ancestry Experience, I might have made a quip about what kind of useless data they are going to store in this huge water-using building out in the farm fields.
But not today. Today I think that the data they will be storing could be information on Ancestry. Ancestry could be waiting to tell me about things I had heard but hadn’t internalized such as that some of my mother’s family came from Ontario, Canada.
And then there are things I had never heard before, such as that some ancestors were in Upstate New York, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family. Also this, according to the application for the sons of the American Revolution, my ancestors Stephen Manchester and Thomas Manchester were in the Revolutionary Army. Now I admit the Revolutionary War was “only” 100 years before G R Sutherland, the applicant to the Sons … , was born in 1879. George’s family probably told him about this revolutionist ancestry when he was a child, and didn’t need to look it up. But I needed to look it up and have it written down.
It is possible that by tracing these threads we could learn something really important
What I don’t know.
Why did G R Sutherland want to be a Son of the American Revolution in 1917?
What I don’t know:
Why the family immigrated from New York to the midwest (though it might be possible to simply check the signs of the times, this was a very common migration route.)
What I don’t know:
How much were these people like us? What would they think of the internet?
What I don’t know:
Where are they now? What will happen when we go to join them? And is it okay there…
I Think This is a Sign of Getting Older …
… caring about genealogy. But I don’t mind. I’m interested! I find it meaningful. I think I can learn something about myself by learning about these other people. And I’m pretty sure that the same impulse is why so many people are on Ancestry. Maybe they too want to find out if they’re related to someone, not someone who was famous, because actually everyone is pretty much related to someone who’s famous. It’s more this: we want to find someone who answers a question we have about ourselves.
And that is the quest I am beginning on today.
