{"id":630,"date":"2009-04-06T09:30:23","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T14:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/?p=630"},"modified":"2014-01-15T15:49:19","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T21:49:19","slug":"in-defense-of-ordinary-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/2009\/04\/06\/in-defense-of-ordinary-ancestors\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Ordinary Ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"

“An Authority said not long ago that there are only 40 or 50 American families that are in any way entitled to the insignia of nobility, but you cannot get the average American who has made money to believe that.\u00a0 He is sure that among his ancestors he shall find somewhere coronets and Norman blood, and when he hires a genealogist to study his lineage, woe be to the searcher if he does not discover at least a baronet or two.” Davenport Democrat,<\/em> 3Dec1905, p.4<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Times have changed.\u00a0 In our experience, most genealogists are truth-seekers, rejoicing in the location and documentation of their Great Uncle Bill (who led a blameless life selling wool socks) and in finally being able to hang his ordinary ornament in place on the family tree.\u00a0 No ancestor left behind<\/em> is their motto.<\/p>\n

We do admit that some still long for roots of gold.\u00a0 And there’s nothing wrong in wanting to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, or finding the truth about grandma’s stories about her grandmother, the full-blooded daughter of a Cherokee chieftain, or whether that family crest you want to hang in the living room is the real deal or something your grandfather bought from a travelling insignia salesman who happened to have your surname in stock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problems come when a searcher intent on fame-by-inheritance ignores\u00a0documented evidence, or lack of any, in the hopes that grafting an apple branch onto an orange tree will somehow make the oranges taste better.\u00a0 It’s as if they believe that without a king or war hero (or, these days, an infamous black sheep) in their ancestry, they are somehow diminished, the ordinary descendant of (yawn<\/em>) ordinary people.<\/p>\n

They forget, or never considered, how interesting an ‘ordinary’ person can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take Great Uncle Bill for instance, that ho hum seller of itchy foot coverings who isn’t even in the direct line:\u00a0 He was the first member of the family to be born in America, not two months after his parents came here from Germany.1<\/sup> \u00a0 He wasn’t quite old enough to fight in World War I, instead staying home to endure the suspicions faced by anyone who spoke or understood German.2<\/sup>\u00a0 \u00a0 Great Uncle Bill owned and operated his own sock shop-throughout the Depression, no less\u2014employing his family (his sister, Great Grandma Erma, helped knit the merchandise\u2014she taught her daughters the patterns, and they taught theirs) until they got back on their feet. 3<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 His wife, Laura, died in childbirth\u00a0and he never remarried, though photos show a handsome, dapper fellow with the family nose and eyebrows.4<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 He raised his\u00a0surviving son, Thomas, \u00a0by himself, but lost him in World War II; he sponsored the Memorial Day parade for years afterward.5<\/sup>\u00a0 \u00a0Great Uncle Bill sold the shop when he turned sixty; the store is now a Batteries Plus.6<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0 He died at the age of seventy-four and was buried next to Laura; his estate went to his nieces and nephews, two of whom are named after him.7<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His knock-knock jokes are legendary , especially the risqu\u00e9 ones, and are repeated at every single family reunion.8<\/sup><\/p>\n

An ordinary life, full of ordinary difficulties, trials, triumphs.\u00a0 All families, for the most part, are a long series of lives like these, people who loved and lived and didn’t need family crests or tiaras to be worth remembering.\u00a0 In the end, at our end, it doesn’t matter whether our ancestors were rich, poor, beggars, thieves, doctors, lawyers, or descendants of royalty.<\/p>\n

It only matters that they are ours.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Similar information on your own Great Uncle Bill might be found in:<\/p>\n

1<\/sup> birth records and immigration papers or census information<\/p>\n

2<\/sup> Newspapers and local histories<\/p>\n

3<\/sup> City Directories, census information, and family stories and documents<\/p>\n

4<\/sup> Death records, family photos<\/p>\n

5<\/sup> Obituaries, newspaper accounts<\/p>\n

6<\/sup> City Directories<\/p>\n

7<\/sup> Death records, cemetery records, probate records<\/p>\n

8<\/sup> Family stories<\/p>\n

\u00a0(Posted by Sarah)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“An Authority said not long ago that there are only 40 or 50 American families that are in any way entitled to the insignia of nobility, but you cannot get the average American who has made money to believe that.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[105,1409],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy","tag-family-histories","tag-genealogy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXc-aa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}