Roots
Digital Art Tree Silhouette by Natalie Kinnear
All right. All right. I get it. "Where the hell is book 3, Jonesy?"
And you're right. This project is way behind. Believe me, I'm not happy about it either. Nor am I happy that most of these recent posts have been one explanation (lame ass excuse) after another. I really just want to get it done for the sake of my own mental health at this point.
You know, so I can start another.
*sigh* I really need to come up with a "safe word" for my own masochistic tendencies.
ANYWAY...
Monday I worked on my manuscript. Monday night I got the results back from my Ancestry DNA test. It's been "on like Donkey Kong" since then.
For most of my life I've had only a casual interest in the "who and where" of my family history. I'm a born and bred Kansas boy. I have a "look to the future, but live in the now" attitude about most things. The majority of the family names I was aware of and knew anything about were dauntingly "generic" in nature (Jones, Brown, Smith). The idea of trying to trace anything back past my great-grandparents on either side was less than appealing and potentially frustrating.
A few things flipped my interest in this endeavor. First and foremost: My paternal grandmother was adopted. The story goes that she was taken from her biological parents at birth. Reportedly they were direct immigrants to the United States (supposedly from Germany?). The place that had the records of her birth and entrance into the foster care system were lost in a fire, which is suspicious and intriguing in its own right. For my own part, I don't like unknown factors. They give me the heebie-jeebies. Who were these people? Why did they come to the states in 1916 between WW1 and WW2? Why was their newborn daughter taken by the state? Or did they willingly give her up? If so, why? Did they have other children? Are they or there offspring still around in the US? Is somebody out there asking these same questions about my family? There are so many questions and there were never many options to find answers... until now in 2019 when DNA testing is a mainstream and (theoretically) legitimate commercial business.
So, long story short, I have not yet managed to hit a big revelation about Grandma Jones's mysterious family connections. According to my test results, there's about 1000+ matches for likely 3rd and 4th cousins and beyond. This in itself is intriguing, but without nailing down the known branches of my family tree, I don't have any way of narrowing this search down. It's a work in progress.
As such, I've started making efforts to fill in my family tree. The result of this effort is pretty much as detailed and challenging as I anticipated. (Jones, Smith, Brown, GAH!) The fun and kind of exciting part of this project is that Ancestry.com has some really neat features (once you activate the free trial or start forking over money) that make finding things like census records fairly painless and easy. It's making sure you're looking at the right people that becomes a problem (did I mention my family names are super generic?). I put in some time when I sent off my test to get a relatively (pun intended) solid foundation started for my tree with information that I had knowledge and evidence for. What has come up since activating the full Ancestry account has blown up into a full time project.
I don't know what I'll learn on this adventure. I don't know what connections I'll manage to make. Honestly, there's a part of me that's nervous that I'm going to discover some things that I'm not real cozy with (I'm getting into Kentucky and Virginia in the 1800s. Farming is a common theme in most of the census records. I can only hope that we stayed mostly on the right side of that mess. Slavery's bad, m'kay.).
Anyway, that's my current obsession. I'm working on the book when I can. I've got a modern family thing that I need to get to right now. I may come back and add more to this later.
Best wishes to you all. May your discoveries and adventures be full of intrigue and exploration this week!
