There’s a saying: April showers bring May flowers. Indeed, they have. However, instead of flora, we are thinking about Mayflowers—those ships that brought our ancestors to this country. These days, tools such as DNA testing help us explore where we came from and where our ancestors wound up once they got off those ships. This month, we examine our ancestry in the United States and how our family histories relate to what we write.
Writing in my DNA
Janet Dawson
A few years back I did an Ancestry DNA test. I was curious about my forebears. With my assortment of family names, I figured I was a basic British Isles mix. When I got the results, I learned that England and Northwestern Europe account for a large percentage of my DNA, along with Scotland and Ireland, and a bit of Cornwall and Wales.
There’s also a large percentage from what Ancestry calls Germanic Europe, mostly German, of course, with a bit of Swiss and a soupçon of French.
It appears my family has been in North America since before the Revolution. A cousin on my mother’s side of the family has traced some of those early migrants, finding the name of one on a set of indenture papers signed in Baltimore in the 1740s. That’s an intriguing story. So is a tale from my father’s side of the family. My paternal grandmother’s family name was German, and there’s a possibility that some of that family line can be traced to a Hessian soldier who came to North America during the Revolutionary War to fight on the British side and then stayed. I’d like to find out more. Indeed, when I delve into the information on the Ancestry website, I find possible paternal ancestors who lived in Pennsylvania and who were born in Germany.
My family history takes me on a journey through Appalachia, with various ancestors hailing from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. The paternal ancestors moved west, living in Indiana, Missouri and Texas. They eventually wound up in western Kansas, where my father was born.
My mother’s parents were born in Kentucky, in adjoining counties. My maternal great-great-grandfather died in January 1863, at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The date and location indicate he was a Civil War casualty, at the Battle of Stones River, also known as the Second Battle of Murfreesboro. Since he was born in Virginia and lived in Kentucky when my great-grandmother was born, I’m guessing he fought for the Confederacy. But I don’t know for sure. Maybe one of these days I’ll find out. But speculation might lead to a story.
The westward migration of Mom’s family went from Kentucky to Oklahoma Territory, where my grandparents married eight months before the territory became a state. Then my Oklahoma-born mother met my Kansas-born father during World War II, and here I am.
The British Isles mix wound up in my writing. My private eye Jeri Howard has a common English last name. Her mother was a Doyle, from a family that’s half Irish and half Italian. My sleuthing Zephyrette, Jill McLeod, has a Scottish last name, and her mother’s maiden name is Cleary, very Irish. I have another character named Kay Dexter; her last name is also English. My work-in-progress is a historical novel and the protagonist is Catriona MacNeill. Scots in name, both first and last. In fact, her father, a secondary character, is the son of an immigrant family from the isles of Western Scotland. As it happens, Kansas figures large in Catriona’s back story. Her father is an officer in the post-Civil War frontier army and as I write the book, he’s been stationed at many of the Kansas forts, from Leavenworth to points west.
West, always moving west, until here I am, with Jeri, on the Pacific coast.
It’s In My Blood
(“I am what I am,” Popeye the Sailor Man)
D. Z. Church
On my father’s side, my grandmother’s family came through Virginia, across the Cumberland Gap into Missouri and Oklahoma, back before there was a Missouri or an Oklahoma. That would be the Scots-Irish crowd. Eventually, they married into a family of German farmers (at least they thought they were) who settled in Henry County, Illinois, in the 1830s. The farmers built a walnut cabin, which became a two-room cabin that was eventually walled into a house, only to be found during renovations.
The original cabin is now in the Illinois Historical Museum in Dearborn, Illinois. I went to its centennial all dressed up in a prairie dress, back—well—way back. Those supposedly German farmers stayed put, two families of them, on acreage in the mighty town of Hooppole, Illinois. Their farms were on the same lane, so it was destined that the two families would merge, which they did in the waning days of the 1800s when my great-grandparents married.
My mother’s side of the family all entered the United States through Ellis Island in the 1890s. One group from Sweden, the other from Switzerland produced my grandfather and grandmother. The Swedish side, from the city of Malmö, settled in Geneva, Illinois, and the Swiss crowd in Batavia, also Illinois. These two towns, north and south of each other, are both on the Fox River. Legend has it that my grandparents met ice skating on the river before World War I. Their marriage vows were cast in a cornfield, just over the county line, in the middle of the night, just after World War I. They were a pair.
My younger sister and I sent our spit to Ancestry to find out who we really were. And guess what? Turns out those Germans were German-speaking Frenchmen from Alsace-Lorraine, with its convoluted history of ownership. So, there is plenty of German and French in our bloodline. The Scots-Irish, yes, were Scots-Irish and passed that particular marker down, down and down. The Swedish were Swedish, and the Swiss were anyone’s guess, more French than not, though they spoke Bavarian German. And there is the one mysterious great-great-grandmother. All inquiries as to background on the Swiss side end with her.
The Fox River crowd were merchants or factory workers. The Alsace-Lorrainians farmed. And the Scots-Irish wandered west through the Cumberland Gap, sort of America’s version of Trek Boers.
I guess you’d say I’m a typical American mutt, someone whose family arrived early and made its way west until civilization ended. The farmers in my family planted their first crops when western Illinois was the farthest the country went.
My father (the farm boy) met my mother (the townie) at a roller rink. Dad’s big brother was dating my mother’s best friend who insisted my mother needed to meet his little brother. It took with one look, or so the tale goes. The town they roller skated in that night was nearing the end of its commercial boom, a mix of railroads, coal, boilermakers and hard work. I was born and spent my early childhood there and on the family farm. It’s in my blood and in my books.
Think of my fictional town of Wanee, Illinois: “…a small town on the edge of the prairie where everyone knew everyone and noticed any goings-on. An influx of workers and their families to feed the burgeoning new businesses continued to turn the sleepy village into anything but…” From Unbecoming a Lady, A Wanee Mystery.
Now you know my inspiration for the town of Wanee and the people who occupy it.
Rat – Nowadays, we think of two things when we see the word rat: 1) your actual rodent type rat, and 2) to rat one’s hair, which is accomplished with a rat tail comb and patience. But in the 1800s, before there were hair pieces, there were rats, hair collected from a lady’s brush each evening. When there was enough, the hair was rolled into a ball or an elongated strip. The rat was then pinned into the woman’s hair to give her coiffure height. They were great in that the rat always matched the lady’s hair color and texture.
Ante up and pony up – Both date to the 1800s, and both are appropriate to gamblers. One is to pay to play, that being ante up. The other, to pony up is what you do when you lose, as in pay your debt.