Yeah. I'm a slacker. I told y'all that I was going to blog and game more. These were my two New Year's Resolutions. I've been doing all right on the second one. Which is part of the reason I'm slacking on the first one, if I am going to be completely honest.
Another part of it is that I've been working on some of my dad's home improvement projects. He's disabled due to a lung disease and fibromyalgia, and considering the house is technically my inheritance, I figured I should do some work to earn it.
One of my father's dreams is to learn his genealogy. As that is one of my passions as well, I've been working hard to put together the information and find out the stories through being a history detective. Right now I would like to share with you some of the Facebook posts I've made regarding this crazy search.
Written May 19, 2019:
I’m so confused. Not exactly shocking, I know, but I am really confused by this particular individual in my massive family tree.
My research is not helped by the fact that I gave birth to three children, by three fathers, and have two current stepchildren, that I wish to pass on research of their historical roots and heritage. As a child, I heard others say, “my family came from Germany” or “my family has native blood” or “I’m related to such-and-such famous person”. While I sat there when they looked at me and could only say “I don’t know”.
It is horrible to not know where you came from. At best it makes you look like a complete idiot and fool. At worst, you could fall in love with a relative. The fact the this is not a more publicized problem as a result of closed adoptions and sperm/egg banks actually shocks me. But growing up, it was an absolutely terrifying possibility in my mind.
My top two motivations for becoming obsessed with genealogy are knowing exactly where I come from and making sure that future generations know who they are related to in order to avoid romantic entanglements with people too closely related. It is bad enough that one of my Nordic ancestors is the result of his father Olaf and Olaf’s niece getting jiggy wit it back around 920 AD!
So. In that vein, I’m obsessed.
And now to my current dilemma. I came across a name in this massive undertaking: Colonel Richard Lovelace, son of John Lovelace and Johanna Wentworth. The LDS tree I am using to follow all this back lists his birth-death as 1396-1466. So of course I Google the name. The picture someone placed as the profile image is of Richard Lovelace, a Cavalier poet of the 17th century, son of Sir William Lovelace and Anne Barne, who lived from 1617 to 1657. Talk about confusing the heck out of me. The only thing I can come up with is the the poet Richard simply shares a name with a relative from 300 years prior, being the one in the tree I’m looking for.
Genealogy research takes a lot of detective skills. Any one who may say otherwise is an absolute fool.
You find some amazing things when you look at your family tree. I have also found that all my research over the years into the history of the world has really helped me understand things that I have found in my family tree.
Understanding the culture in which my ancestors lived has truly helped me understand why one guy had children with over 10 women. Culture, man. I found a woman who was 16 when she married her 21 year old husband in Kentucky. For the time and the location, it was not that uncommon. When getting back far enough and in the royal bloodlines, along with a couple of legal bastards, you find second, third and fourth cousins marrying, which again, for the time and location were not uncommon occurrences. Even today, many states of the US only forbid first and second cousins from marriage, and a few that only forbid relations of first cousins or closer to marry. But to not be sickened by this, one must look at the culture of the time and place. It's hard to put yourself in that position. We look at Edgar Allan Poe marrying his 13 year old first cousin and go... "EWWWW". Culture and history, man. Culture and history. Gotta look at the big picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment