Did you know that I let my membership to Ancestry lapse and spent over a year working on DISPROVING my genealogical trees?
Nobody on earth has that kind of back-history. Every medieval country in Europe? Every royal family? Going back to the Roman Empire? And the House of David? Saints and Knights Templars? Semi-mythological Irish kings? In direct lineage? Grandmothers and Grandfathers? Rubbish!
Saints? Yes, research showed, clergy married during those times. Everyone had children, regardless.
And the Irish King DID, as far as history knows or fabulists can tell, marry Zedekiah's "Daughter of God's House."
Romans? Iffy, in my estimation, but I couldn't disprove Valentinian l.
Why then, was it so difficult to pinpoint Grandmother's modern-day sister? Oh, she was adopted. Now you tell me.
Where is my patriotic ancestral Chickahominy grandfather? Oh, not grandfather, but grandmother, the records show. And the Mayflower? Yes. Definitely a correlation between that native American and the boatloads of pilgrims landing in Virginia around the same time. And that co-author of the Mayflower Compact? Well documented.
Why can I only find the limbs of the tree that I suspect have been tampered with by strangers? I am missing so much.
Spelling you say? The way the Scots named their children, you tell me? The way my own ancient family tended to have the YOUNGEST son inherit the manse?
What about the Jacobite twins? No need to prove that one. The Clan of Stuart of Butte proved it for me. From Masonic and other records. It took them a solid year to do so. I am legitimate.
At first I thought that the Ancestry site must have been infected with misinformation due to so many thousands of edits. Then I believed that I had not been careful enough myself, although many of my long-gone relatives had told me practically the same things when I was a child. I was more than a little mystified and disgruntled by my lack of ability to find my mistakes.
I had joined Ancestry because my memory of the stories told by Grandmothers, and great-aunts and uncles, and old seafaring distant relatives was beginning to fade. Where was that shoebox of evidence I had played with as a child? Where was the proof – besides the mangled and misleading scraps of evidence found on Ancestry and transferred to every other genealogy site the internet has to offer as THE GOSPEL TRUTH?
This month, I'm giving myself a Birthday present. I'm going to rejoin Ancestry and have my DNA tested. Maybe I'll get a HUGE SURPRISE and have to begin again. Maybe I AM who I think I AM NOT. On the other hand, who the hell do I think I am?
