Do recall seeing the made-for-tv movie, "Roots"? It had a big impact on me and I still think of "Chicken George". Few movies do such a good job of connecting events over a long period of time. There are things that can't be understood in short snap shots. You need to see them over a longer period of time as was done with "Roots". For several years, I saw the "Roots" story as just another interesting movie and story and it was not until some years later that I got interested in finding out more about my own "Roots". This is not specifically about my "Roots", but I will use it to explore the lessons and significance that can come from understanding "where you came from". If you have not tried to explore your "Roots" you should give it a try. I think you will find it a very personally changing experience.
I'll keep this short. I was lucky to have know both my two grandfathers and one grandmother and a few great uncles and aunts. As a kid it was hard to keep track of who was related to who and how. We had large extended families and different people were calling my grandmother aunt and sister. I just gave up and did not spend much time trying to figure things out. All of us were poor and some could not read or write. Communications were limited to things that were going on in the present and little time was devoted to the past. One of my grandfathers was a good story teller and I did not know which were true and with were just made up. This made it even harder to figure out anything about the past. It seemed that everything that happened in the past always ended up turning out good for some reason. My father and most of my uncles were in WWII, but seldom ever spoke about anything that had happened. Adults didn't spend a lot of time talking to kids in those days. Kids were supposed to, "be seen and not heard", so we were cut out of most family talks. When were finally old enough to participate, there were few older people left to participate with. That is why after all this time later that I got interested in my own Genealogy. I was retired and had the time, plus many documents were now available on the Internet.
I had very good luck finding details about several lines of my family, but still have a few dead ends. I think that everyone wonders exactly where they came from and I don't mean "Adam and Eve". Like in the movie "Roots", who were those people and what were they like? Do I look like them and that sort of thing? I was very surprised about what I found as I know you will be if you start looking into your own Genealogy. I thought that I was part Irish since some members of my family claimed that they had come from Ireland and were Scotch/Irish. I found out in my research that many of the Scots who came to America stopped over in Ireland for a while first, but did not mix with the Irish. That is why from an early age that I noticed that everyone I knew disliked Catholics. We were all Protestants. Most of my relatives came here in the 1600's and almost none came after 1750. They all seemed to stick together thru their churches and extended families even though they would spread out around the USA for a while, they would eventually come back together again some where else. Many were Free Masons and formed chapters where ever they settled. Some of the things that you will find as you get into the details of you family histories is that some of the history that you learned in school is not correct and is clearly biased by whoever had the power of the pen over it. I'll give you just one example.
As noted before, my family were Scots who came here to get free of England and own land. Owning land was one of the main things that drove people to migrate to America. One small point is that I am a direct descendant of Pocahontas who only had one son and also Samuel Wood who had seven sons and was married in the home of George Washington before the revolution. The historical point is that in 1771 many of my relatives lived in North Carolina and were farmers, members of the Free Masons and a group call the Regulators. It was a wild area and the Regulators maintained law and order. England was taxing the farmers so that they were not much better off here than if the were back in England. It got so bad that the Colonists rose up against the Crown in a battle that took place in Alamance, NC. There were about 2,000 armed farmers and Regulators on one side and about the same number of English troops on the other. They fought for two days and the English troop routed the farmers. In my opinion, this was the first battle of the Revolutionary War, not the small 1/2 hour thing at Concord Bridge up near Boston. After winning the battle, the English hung about a dozen of the organizer and asked that anyone not willing to swear to the Crown should, "get out of Dodge". That is exactly what 1,400 families in the area did. Mine was one of them. Look up the "Battle of Alamance" on the Internet and see what the leader of the Colonists had to say just before he was hung. It was a very moving speech. This is all left out of the US History books, because the people who have written the history books were mostly from New England. If you look into your own genealogy, you'll find things like this.
I have several grandfathers who fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and every other war. They were mostly paid with land warrants for land out west and that is the main reason the kept moving west. Some even owned slaves, but very few. When they had the Missouri Compromise, my grandfather freed his slaves because he was never keen on the idea from the start. I have letter written by one of his slaves, a Richard Kimmons which was written in 1931 where he did not have anything bad to say about my grandfather and gave insight into the ethics and morality of my grandfather. You will find out a lot more about slavery in the USA and find that very few people owned slaves. Some American Indians owned slaves and were themselves slaves. After 1780 when the USA was officially formed, no more slaves were legally imported into the USA and no more than 50% of the states every had slaves. This is a fact you will not see in history books. The founders wanted to get rid of slavery when the Union was formed, but the bond needed between the states was so weak at the time that to try to eliminate slavery at that time would have doomed the whole Union. It was not until 1863, or 83 years later that slavery was eliminated from the 50% of the states who still had slavery.
Any family who has been here prior to about 1800 has about a 90% chance of having some American Indian blood as I do. American Indians were totally none racist, they had no problem marrying Europeans or Blacks. The figure that 98% of Blacks have some Native American blood. My Indian connection is with the Cherokee tribe who was part of the "Trail of Tears" in 1830. If you don't know about this, you should look into it. This is where all Native Americans west of the Mississippi River were rounded up and herded out to Oklahoma. By 1830 Sequoya figured out an alphabet for the Cherokee language and by 1835, the Cherokee Indians had a higher literacy rate than the European Americans of the time. Like most dealings by the Europeans with the Native Americans, they were happy with the Indians out in Oklahoma until oil was discovered on Indian land. As true "Indian Givers" the eastern Europeans stole the land and the oil back. You find all these things when you dig into your Genealogy.
Well, here is the point of all this. Once you see how you are connected to real people from the past, you are humbled in a special way. Ask yourself, "what did these people really want?" Why did they endure such hardship? It was the same for them then as it is for you right now. As parents, you want to take care of your family as they did and prepare your children to take over where you left off. This is the way it has been since the beginning and it still is. It is not complicated. You want your kids to have a "better" life than you have had and to not have to bear the burdens that you did. By a "better" life, we don't mean a softer life, though that is what it seems to have become. You want them to give respect and receive respect. You want them to honest, thrifty and ethical and to take care of their families as you have tried to do. This is what finding your "Roots" will do for you. I am still searching mine and never tire of the search.
