For as long as I can remember,
almost every white person I ever met proudly claimed somewhere between 1/16th
and 1/64th native American ancestry bloodline. It seems that in a
scant 100 years those tribes have gone from being considered slightly above
animals in importance to some kind of fierce and proud race of warrior people
who make us white people more noble when we can trace our ancestry to them. The
real lesson is how much anecdotal information we accept as fact from our aging
relatives who have a tendency to remember all the good connections and
accomplishments in our families and leave out all the drunks, horse thieves and
other sorts of rascals we all more than likely had a few of.
Around St. Patrick’s Day, there is
a shift towards everyone claiming their Irish roots. Once again, they were
largely reviled by the mostly Protestant people who had settled in the US
because of Ireland's predominantly Catholic faith. It is now fashionable to be Irish, though, and
everyone who can mathematically claim it wears their “Kiss Me, I’m Irish”
button on the 17th.
I recently became more interested
in my family genealogy. I don’t really know why but I think it was a
combination of going to some antique auctions and considering the people that
used those old items and running across an ad for a DNA testing kit that
allowed you to send in a saliva sample and have a lab determine the percentages
of your heritage (European, Asian, African, etc.) I realized that I’d like to
know where I came from.
This all lead me to join
ancestry.com, a genealogical network that matches people, the information they
can post on their own and huge databases of census, birth and death records,
immigration documents and so on. By pooling information people can learn a lot
about their connections relatively quickly. It also can become addictive to see
how far back you can trace each branch of your tree. Consequently, there are a
fair amount of wrong connections claimed just so people can keep “connecting”
back further through generations hundreds of years ago.
The first thing to keep in mind is
how fast the previous generations multiply! You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents,
8 great grandparents and so on. The idea that “my family came over from Ireland
(or any other specific place)” is pretty crazy due to the fact that in order to
trace your roots back to the mid-1600s or so, when most immigrants began to come
to America, you have to remember that it was about 9 or 10 generations ago.
That means that the average American had between 500 and 1000 ancestors that
made the crossing. That’s just in your direct line. It’s a pretty safe bet
there were folks from England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Germany, Sweden and
anywhere else that had a boat big enough to cross the ocean because land was
plentiful and so were opportunities here.
I traced the Aldridge line back,
predictably, to England. Aldridge, Alldredge, Aldrich, Allred, Aleswich and a
few other variations are thought to have come from the days when surnames
described the person. John of the Old Ridge or John on Alder Ridge would have
described where a person lived. Many names, of course, described vocations.
John the Miller, John the Smith and John the Tailor are examples of origins of
those names. I even connected my bloodline to Sir Nicholas The Crusader de
Aldryche, who was a knight during the holy crusades supposedly renowned for his
bravery. The cynic in me wonders if that means he chopped off the heads of
innocent Muslims and Jews who did not run to embrace his particular brand of
faith….
Sure enough, 8 generations back in
the Walsh line (my mother’s father) I found Chief William Davis. He was
actually a white man who married an “Indian princess”. She was the daughter of
Chief Black Fox, son of Chief Attakullakulla, son of White Owl Raven, son of
Chief Taminad, etc. All were of the Cherokee tribe in the southeastern region
of the US. I was able to find out that Black Fox had sided with Chief
Doublehead, a Cherokee chief widely known here in North Alabama, on some treaty
points and ultimately lost power because of it.
If you do the math, that makes me
1/512th Cherokee. Most of the other 511 parts of me are from the
United Kingdom. My mother’s namesakes came from Wales and Ireland and my
father’s from England and Scotland. If you are an Aldridge, McCulley, Baughn,
Walsh, Key, McClendon, Frazier or Parker we may be pretty closely related.
So when it’s time to celebrate
native Americans I reckon I will claim my connection to them through my 6th
great grandfather Chief Black Fox. When it’s St. Patty’s Day I will be Irish,
the seed of my 3rd great grandfather Thomas Walsh. The rest of the
time I will just be what we all pretty much are: mutt.
