No royalty among my ancestors.
No rabble-rousers.
No poetic rogues.
No great historic figures.
No minor historic figures.
No peacemakers.
No abolitionists.
No fighters for civil rights nor women’s rights.
No celebrities.
No tribal members.
No African Americans – not in the last 2000 years, anyway.
Not Italian or Eastern European.
Not French.
Not Scottish.
Not enough Scottish or Irish or German or Norwegian ancestors to be considered Scottish or Irish or German or Norwegian.
I’m just English. The vast majority of my ancestors are from around London and the midlands.
I’m so English that I qualify to be a member of all the oh-so-loud and tedious white supremacy groups.
I’m not even from Appalachia.
There are no precious artifacts handed down over the eight generations and the more than 300 years my ancestors have been in the Americas. There are no stories of the journey over the sea or the journey from wherever the first ancestors landed in the Carolinas or Virginia or wherever. There are no stories about their moves Westward. There are no ancestral lands – no “That’s where our family’s great estate once was.”
In spending all these years trying to identify my ancestors by name and birthplace, as far back as I can go, I admit that I was hoping for something that would make me go “Wow, that’s MY heritage!” But it hasn’t happened.
What I have experienced:
- Pain at seeing the ages of young girls marrying and having babies.
- Pain as pregnant women are abandoned by husbands or lovers.
- Pain at realizing the reason some people have DNA matches is because of a liaison outside of marriages, further revealed through dates and places, worrying that those liaisons weren’t consensual, worrying about the women involved and their safety at the time.
- Pain at the poverty and struggles represented in moving so far so often, in search of work.
- Pain at seeing the numbers of enslaved people some ancestors held.
I won’t be on any Ancestry commercials. I won’t be on Finding My Roots, gushing about my unique, amazing ancestry and how it all feels such a huge part of me now.
I don’t regret all these years of ancestry research. Not at all. It got be through COVID lockdowns, if anything else. But I do feel disappointment. My ancestry story: it’s just not that interesting.
At least I discovered black cousins. and helped them solve their own ancestral mystery. And got some blogs out of it (see below)
I’m taking a break for a while. I still have my account, but I’m not subscribed; therefore, I don’t have access to census records, birth certificates, etc. I do have access to all my trees and all that I’ve inputted and can still receive messages from other users. Sometime in 2027, I’ll jump back on and see if, at long last, I can further flesh out my Beasley family line and the parents of Emma Smith. And as I say on my profile on Ancestry, if you see that you have a DNA match with me, but you aren’t sure how, hit me up – if it’s over 25 cm, I probably know.
My blogs here about geneology:
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