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| "A Family Tree" by Norman Rockwell |
If you know anything about Mormons, you probably know that we go in for genealogy in a big way. My mother (hi Mom!) has been looking over Dad's family online, tracing the work that's been done on a couple of family lines. There were some names she already knew, including the Lincoln family that eventually produced a certain American president, but at some point our research stalled out. However, some other descendants of the same family line had been successful digging out names far past what we'd been able to find, and as she traced their work back she found we had ancestors from England. (I had long suspected this; there are several surnames in my family tree that look very English, and since I was a little girl I've had an inexplicable longing to visit England.) Anyway, as she continued on there began to be some familiar names popping up: Lord So-&-So and Lady Whatsit... an Italian king... Charlemagne...
So apparently if you go back far enough, we're descended from European royalty. La-di-da, right? I don't put too much stock in this, since 1) if you go back far enough it seems almost EVERYONE is descended from royalty, and 2) we're also descended from a fair number of town drunks, horse thieves, and people who cheat at solitaire. Genealogy can tell you where you come from and who your people were, it can tell you why you have blue eyes and brown hair and can roll your tongue, but it can't tell you who you are. That's not what genealogy is for. But that is what your life is for.
2 comments:
A few fun genealogy facts: Rob and I are 8th cousins. His dad and my mom are 7th cousins. We found this out after we were married and I took a genealogy class at BYU. Members of three different lines, one from my mom, one from my dad, and one from Rob's dad all lived in the same town in Delaware at the time of the Revolutionary War. The three families married into each other a staggering number of times. Rob is the 30th great grandson of William the Conqueror. Both Eldon and Jason have gotten a big kick out of that fact. Family history is way fun!!
William the Conqueror -- very cool. And yes, we have several families from the South that seemed to enjoy intermarrying again and again, to the point it's a wonder my entire family doesn't have three heads...
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