When you give the gift of Ancestry this holiday season...
- yr Auntie aka Katrina
- Jan 2
- 2 min read
My mom got the ancestry.com swab kit and membership on Black Friday special, and all the leaves started popping up in earnest today...
So, my grandma on my mom's side was raised Cherokee. Now, this was the 1940's/1950's and while she spent every summer with her Cherokee family, and she knew full well she was Cherokee, she dgaf. She passed well enough, as far as she was concerned she was a "modern American girl" and didn't really care about her ancestry. Her brother did, but unfortunately, the oral history got real screwed up somewhere along the way.
We were always told to look to the maternal side of the family to find the Cherokee family. That was absolutely incorrect, it was on the paternal side. The maternal side? The however-many great grandmother who married Cherokee was the great-great-great granddaughter of William Bradford. You know, the top pilgrim? Came over on the Mayflower? Led the settlement? That guy? Yeah, she's the great-grandchild of his eldest son and namesake. You'd think this would be preserved in the family tradition, right? Oh, she went full native. And the family is culturally Cherokee to this day.
I am CACKLING. This is the most American thing ever. Potentially even richer than my mom, the great-grand-daughter of the chief Rabbi of his city's synagogue in Lithuania, marrying the descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks and Transylvanian Romani (definitely another "only in America" kind of pairing). And then making me and my sibs. The Ancestral Realm must have been a trip these past 43 years, with all these people in the same room 🤣🤣
In other news, I got the second surgery slot! 7:30am check-in time on Monday. Whoo hoo! Long before my usual first meal, also long before the fishgirl thirst kicks in. I approve.
Update: we just found an ancestress from Germany in the 1550's recorded not by name, but by description: "Enormous Lady Viking."
Fuck yeah.
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