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I began researching my ancestry and recording it on webpages in November of 1999, nearly 22 years from the date I am writing this now. I became curious about my ancestry after I had children of my own, and in response, my mother sent me boxes of old papers, photos, books and bibles that had been handed down to her from her mother. At first glance, the old papers were just that, fragile, unfamiliar, and extremely difficult to read. The pivotal piece of paper was a neatly folded apprenticeship contract, dated July 7, 1749, probably opened only a few times over the 250 years between when it was written and when I received it from my mother. In this document, a mother (at that time unknown to me) placed her 8½-year-old son into an apprenticeship to learn the trade of weaving in colonial Rhode Island. The name of this boy, Lancelot Larkham, was on most of the other old papers I had, but the dates clearly spanned the duration of his life. Being a mother of boys, myself, I was immediately fascinated by the circumstances that led to a young child to being apprenticed in colonial New England, and I was inspired to learn who he was and how he was connected to me. I have since learned quite a bit more about that 8½-year-old boy. He was my fifth great-grandfather, and in the process of putting together the puzzle pieces of his life, I have also discovered many new, fascinating pieces of the puzzle that, in a way, make up who I am. My ancestry is both atypical and quintessentially American. DNA analysis shows that I am a mix of Northwestern and Southern European (Greek and Balkan) ancestry, but also Western Asian with ancestry from Anatolia and the Caucasus. My maternal grandfather's ancestry is certainly the most exotic legacy left to me, as his parents were of Pontic Greek ancestry, his father having been born in the village of Vathy on the Cyzicus Peninsula that extends into the Sea of Marmara in Asia Minor. His mother was born in the ancient city of Constantinople, a descendant of the early Greeks who settled along the southern coast of the Black Sea, across from Russia. To peruse photographs of this beautiful young couple leaves me with great wonder, as their world was so vastly different from my own. I marvel at the strength and tenacity of these young people who traveled so far to realize their own particular dream. .My paternal ancestry is equally intriguing to me. My paternal grandmother's parents were of both early and more recent arrival, the Allreds of North Carolina having traveled from Wales to the port of Cape Fear prior to the Revolution, while my Sorensen and Thompsen great-great-grandparents traveled across the icy waters from Vejle, Denmark to settle in the vastly different land of southern Utah in the mid-1800s. My Russell ancestors of Scotland came from Lanarkshire, Scotland to the untamed frontier of the Wyoming territory in the 1870s. These are the people who, in part, make up who I am. For all their hopes, dreams, achievements, fears, faults and inadequacies, they are mine and I have taken great joy in learning of their lives.
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The pinecone graphics on this page is are scans of
stencils I made using the stencil, Last updated: Monday, July 05, 2021 01:00:27 PM | |||||||||
