My GGGGGrandfather came to North America in 1835.
He was a humble Irish sawyer up in the Maritimes. That means he spent his day in the pit, drawing on the saw, up and down. Hard work by any measure. His son tried several jobs, including farming. He came to America as an illegal. It was just a matter of a few miles, and you were in Maine. After a failed marriage, and a move to Boston, he took time out to serve on the Union side manning the Blockade ships along the Southern Coast.. His five children all settled in for family life in America, and all that meant at the time. We do know that one served in the Spanish-American War. One of the children, from one of that lot became a vaudevillian actress. The children of those children became Military Men, Lawyers, and Teachers, and Nurses. The children of today have become Insurance brokers, and Sound Engineers, Medical Transcriptionists, and Cafeteria workers, Computer geeks, and Moms. I won’t get into the Maternal side…think 1630 and the Planters.
Genealogy is an interesting research, and a fine way to learn out about your Family. How You came to be. It is also a measure of the Country’s History, and what it means to be American. Not one person in my North American Family ever became famous. Sure, some became well respected in their communities, but for the most part, just buckled down, and did what was necessary, contributing to the cloth that is this Nation. This is how most of us live each day. We Live, and Love. We work and Play. We find time to help those that need it. We don’t want interruptions in our Affairs. The prying neighbor, just gets us steamed. Medical emergencies scare the hell out of us. The phone calls from pollsters, and politicians interrupt our evening meals. The Government always finds a way to break into our meager lives. To some it’s the taxes, to others, its not having the tax monies to pay for roads, and schools. War always disrupts to the maximum. Some of the Wars fought by this Country may have been necessary. Our duties to Protect our Country, or those of our friends, is part of our way.
But Modern warfare, in these days of Global Communication, merely shows the inadequacies of our systems, and Elected Officials. Our children are ripped from our lives, and sent beyond our reach, to live or die according to the whims of fate, or the the negligence of our Leaders. When talking to each other doesn’t work, try talking again, and then, again. When we are attacked by lunatics, hunt them down and arrest them. Our Policeman are better trained, and armed than whole armies of our past. Our Special Operation Teams can penetrate the most impenetrable environments. Why is it necessary to spend Trillions of our wealth, and surrender the lives of our sons and daughters? To preserve what, our Pride, our Oil, Our American way of life?
If it’s to prevent another attack, why do we act in such a way as to create an entire new crop of enemies, like a Nebula of new suns? The greatest interruption in our lives today is the presence of these children of luxury that purport to be our Leaders. They are not men who lead, they are scurrilous, and unintelligent. They are subject only to their reptillian brains.. They are plain and simply the worst leaders this Country has ever known.
My ancestors are rolling in their graves.
Links to get you started:
Genforum
Rootsweb
FamilyHistory
This story originates at my website.
“the worst leaders this nation has ever had” is a pretty bold statement given the fact that this country has had people like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan in the wheelhouse – and that’s just in the last fifty years! While I do agree that GWB has proved himself to be a self-serving bastard who has caused the deaths of more people than Phillip Morris, he can’t really be called “the worst ever”. That would be giving him way too much credit. Heck, half of the credit should go to Bill Clinton for fueling these right-wing freaks in the first place. If it weren’t for his total lack of judgement we probably wouldn’t have had to endure all of those years of Republican majority. That’s just my opinion of course.
with a single thing you said.
I could make this list as long as the page, but I’ll just pick 3 random ones.
No President ever lost an American City
No president ever invaded a Foreign Country that didn’t attack us, and lost so many thousands of our Soldiers lives in the process,nor the tens of thousands permanently injured, not to mention the deaths of probably more Iraqis than Saddam caused
No President ever immunized himself of War Crimes by having a law slipped in to do just that.
Look up FDR’s role in the acquisition of the Phillipines. Look up The U.S.’s roles in the Russo-Japanese war, the conflicts between China and Japan, and most importantly – The Cold War. I think it would be fair to say that Japan’s attack on the U.S. had a lot to do with the fact the we were protecting our interests in China(a communist country)by placing sanctions on Japan which were supposed to end the conflicts(it should be noted that China had much to gain by these sanctions)but instead prolonged them. Quite frankly, FDR prevented Japan from comitting the same pointless efforts that we made in Korea and Vietnam – so it would be fair to say that FDR, HT, JFK, LBJ, and RMN were all as guilty as GWB is in his role in Iraq. To quote Solomon…”There is nothing new under the sun”. I think that you are giving way too much credit to George W. Bush –
Without going into an Historical joust, you can go all the way back to the Colonial Indian Wars, and find imperfections in our leaders, and how their actions led to the present.
In fact, there have been only two presidents that attempted to usurp the Constitution, in favor of an Imperial Presidency; Nixon, and GWB. Nixon failed, however, his minions (Cheny, etc) are present in this administration. They carried with them those same treasonous beliefs. They are, at this time, having more success at it, than Nixon, which makes them the WORST. But not for long. Their downfall will be precipitous. It will happen so quick, you won’t believe it is even happening. Just look how fast Nixon went. One minute Agnew was gone…then pfffT
Fear Not! We will beat them back down under the rocks from whence they came. The United States Citizens, even with their all failings, have always risen to the occassion. We make mistakes, but in the long run, those mistakes have been corrected, or will will be corrected. Never give up on your Country. Never give up on the Democrats. To do so, is to be foolish, indeed.
I certainly hope that you are right. I was a devout republican until about a year ago – that’s when I started to realize that things were really wrong. There were two things that ultimately led to my departure: 1. Ann Coulter – pretending that Christianity would be even remotely like her ideologies and screwed-up thoughts is nothing short of evil. 2. When George Bush made the statement “you are either with us or against us” I realized that he was the kind of person who makes ultimatums. People who make ultimatums are psychopaths – they need psychiatric help in a big way.
I’ve been doing the family history thing for several years now, after being introduced to the Mormon web site by my youngest. We’ve built entire vacation trips around family research and seen some interesting places. Since my mom’s ancestors are from Guernsey, CI, I have a great excuse to visit that lovely spot someday.
And I agree wholeheartedly with your feelings about the current crop of losers in the executive. I’m saddened and embarrassed by how low we have fallen.
The British Isles is tough for Family History finders, with all the old records lost or burnt, but the trips together sound wonderful.
Some people are not interested in knowing about the past. To me, it’s a way of understanding my little place in the world.
In this Information World, it’s sad that it is so hard to gather this data. There are two major places, the LDS, and Ancestry. LDS is a human driven transcription by volunteers. That’s why so little is on the web, the rest still awaits transcription from microfilm. Ancestry is the big Commercialized version, the cities and states have outsourced their info to, and we all know how well outsourcing has worked.
If I didn’t start on the genealogy, I wouldn’t have know of my my family’s participation in the Civil War. I wouldn’t have read “Diary of a Contraband. I wouldn’t have written with the Author, and other Civil War Historians. My life would have been less full, historically.
Those who know their History are less likely to repeat it’s errors…or something like that.
Anyways thanks for your contribution to the topic.
I bought a membership at Ancestry a couple of years back, mainly to obtain copies of census records in the original (although I found later I could probably have gotten them from the local LDS library). I found 11 different spellings in the census for one of our French family names;-)
I located some wonderful small regional and county sites run by local genealogical societies that were quite helpful at Cindi’s List, as well as Rootsweb, which you mentioned. Happy hunting!
Cindy has done terrific work…a great contribution.
Speaking of one-named people. I once lived on a road called “Lucy Shortcut Rd.” My recently deceased uncle said” She must have been a helluva gal, to have a shorcut named after her….ahhhh, the wisdom of elders.
My b-I-l got interested in genealogy some years back and besides his own family, he researched ours. He and my sister had taken trips to different places around the U.S. to gather information and besides a lot of computer work, he did a lot of legwork finding old cemeteries and stones.
He took us all the way back to Ireland, but to me that’s just too distant. My first relatives arrived in the 1700’s and fought in the Revolution. I’ve tried to go back as far as our family farm house which was built before the Civil War because it’s here and tangible. Plus we have a family cemetery that has my first relatives that moved here, and will probably have future relatives there as well.
A lot of people don’t really care about their past family, but it seems since I’ve gotten older, that I really want to find out who they were, what type of people they were and just something about their everyday lives. I guess I am one of the few lucky ones that have family history all around me.
You are very lucky to have your ancestors so close. In some way, they speak to you everyday.
When I think about it, this is similar to the tribes around the world that respect their elders, and ancestors, nothing wrong with that. If you respect your Ancients, you can respect others. A famous man once said, “Don’t be a dick!”. It starts with respect of ourselves, and elders, and proceeds from there.
A Two time Recommended Story…Has that ever been done?