Family Business

These are my paternal great-grandparents and their children, one of whom was my father's mother. This photo was taken around the year 1910; all of these people are deceased now. The only one I ever actually met was my paternal grandmother, and due to my family situation, I did not know her well. She's in the back row, third from the right.

(For the full effect, click on the picture, and when the new page loads, click on the lower right corner of the photo to enlarge it again.)

Back then, when you had your picture taken indoors, you had to hold still for a length of time in order to allow for full exposure of the film. Also, getting one's photograph was not commonplace as it is today; people hadn't yet learned how to "pose" and look either cute or natural for the camera the way we do now.

However, I've seen photos of other families contemporaneous with this photo, and while the people in those other photos may not look comfortable, they at least look pleasant.

Two years ago, totally out of the blue, I got intensely involved with researching my family's genealogy, on both my mother's and father's sides. I met a lot of my relatives, most of whom I'd never met before, and talked with my elderly father about his childhood and his recollections of what had been told to him about his ancestors, as well as my mother's. Among my mother's papers I found three handwritten sheets of paper, listing a handful of ancestors' names and approximate birth and death dates that her mother had given her back in the 1970s when the genealogy craze first started in the U.S.

A couple of my cousins had a treasure trove of old family photographs and allowed me to make copies. I took copious handwritten notes and also downloaded and printed out a large quantity of documentation from online research. Most of it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, so I will have to reconstruct it -- fortunately, I have a really good memory.

The Internet has been an incredible development in genealogical research. Instead of traveling to courthouses all over the country, I was able to sit in front of computer at 3 o'clock in the morning and view images of U.S. census records from the mid-1800s. There are a lot of genealogists out there who have done an immense amount of work and are sharing it via the Internet. As with anything on the 'Net, you have to take things with a grain of salt, and you learn to approach things with a good intuition and critical research skills.

What I've been able to determine is that on both sides of my family, branching back through the maternal and paternal lineages -- and that's a lot of people, a lot of surnames -- no one immigrated to the U.S. later than 1800. I had not been aware of it until now, but I am pretty much a 100% daughter of the Confederacy, and before that, a daughter of the American Revolution many times over. Which fact would have absolutely thrilled my mother had she known it, bless her heart.

At least one branch of my mother's family (surname Warren) has been traced back to Jamestown. As far as I can tell, most of my ancestors came over from England, Ireland, and Scotland, but there are also Swedes, French Huguenots, and German Palatines.

My father's father was descended on his mother's side from Andrew Job, a confidante of William Penn, who led the Quaker "refugee" settlement from England to the New World. Another Job descendant named DeWitt Jobe, my grandfather's mother's first cousin, became a Confederate martyr at the age of 19. A spy for the South, he was captured by Union forces, beaten, strangled, his eyes gouged out and his tongue cut out, after which he was dragged behind a horse until dead. (Or so the story goes; it may have been embellished over the years; then again, maybe not. War is hell.) He was posthumously awarded the Confederate Medal of Honor in 1977.

I like to say that I am distantly related to half the people in the United States, and I don't think that's much of an exaggeration. Indeed, related to a lot of the people in Europe, as well.

This means that my story is the story of America. The way my ancestors evolved in the past 350 years on U.S. soil is the way the American consciousness has developed and how we got to the state we're in now, in the year 2006.

Look again at the picture of my father's "Granny Williams" and think about that some more.

Comments

[michael]

Hi Kitty,

Very interesting post. I, too, am interested in genealogy. I'd love to have a DNA analysis done by one of those commercial firms that uses the information to tell you just what you consist of in terms of ethnic origins and so on.
Maybe someday I'll do it.
I used to be completely, hopelessly engrossed in the Civil War (or maybe you prefer War Between the States), collecting memorabilia and reading countless books. But, alas, the war is over for me and it's just a passing fancy now.

[Kitty]

Or as they say in the South, the War for Southern Independence. :) :) :) And the way some folks talk about it, you'd think it happened just last week instead of 150 years ago.

Because of my parents' estrangement from their families (about which I'll have more to say later), and because I was born and raised in urban New Orleans instead of the rural South, I hadn't realized how deep my Southern roots are, or how much I inherited from them (for better and for worse), until I started doing genealogy.

BTW, if I remember correctly, I believe that DNA testing only works for male descendants. I thought about asking my 83-year-old father to do it, but ... nah ...

[marlaine]

my parents are from germany...and there...one does a small book whilst in elementary school
they copy what they can from their parents' books about their genealogy

my brother bought a trees program for my parents and i input all the data that we had...
they went back to germany in 95 [i think their last time] to get some more info
so it's quite accuarate to about 1740 or so then it breaks up a lot
it is quite interesting isn't it

deepak chopra tells quite a tale about when his father dies...and the records kept in india
the power of family is very strong

i wish your great-great grandmother had smiled a bit more ;)

[Michael]

Wow..that is amazing..I still say there is a book there.....Adventures and Strengths of Southern Women!! Your great grandmother's smile/frown is interesting (now this may sound silly but President Bill Clinton's smile is a frown....take a look at it..it is an "upside down" smile) To me, there is a lot of "don't mess with Great Grandma" in her smile/frown because it speaks of a tough life, but also I see a lot of wisdom, power and knowledge behind it.

I bet if you started connecting your family geneology that it would spread to many families in America, no less the ones in Europe!

Thanks for sharing the photos and some of the family history with us. Yikes as to your relative that was tortured (Makes me think of Guantanemo Bay ("Gitmo") and the torture scandals/mess in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael

[Kitty]

Marlaine, yes, I don't think that here in the U.S. as much attention is given to family history (ironic because such importance is given to "family values".) It is really fascinating, and I've had a lot of fun with it.

And Michael, I promise to send you an autographed copy of the book :). There is definitely one (at least) on the way.