I've never had a fixed sense of home. That very much reflects a childhood spent abroad, moving neighborhoods and traveling. My career military stepfather always knew that he would be moving and had he not had a heart attack within months of marrying my mother, we might well have changed duty stations at some point before his retirement.
As it was, I spent my formative and teen years in a place which would eventually, due to historical and political change, no longer exist in the way it had during previous generations. While I could dwell on the whys and wherefores of these changes, what is important here is that I learned quite early that what made a home for me was feeling comfortable both in my skin and in my space. For years I was more at home in my space than in myself, a situation that happily altered with time, experience and learning.
Often as a kid I would look out a window and wonder what life would be like when I was older and how other people came to decide how and whom they should be and where they should live. Now, of course, I know that such decisions are based on myriad social, political, economic and personal factors.
As an older person now confronted with mere snippets of recorded information regarding the lives and histories of some of my ancestors, I consider the question of home and what it means yet again,
Having identified some of the immigrants in my paternal tree, who came to the then-British colony of South Carolina in the 1730's from Germany, I of course would like to understand the motivation for so radically altering the course of a family's life by crossing an ocean to a place virtually unknown. In this case, a potter, his wife and their children made the voyage hoping for land and the chance of a new life. How they chose where to go and why they settled in Orangeburg, South Carolina is a matter of some speculation at this point though I suspect the growing German immigrant population there may have been a draw. Another possibility was the opportunity to build a community of their own.
Sadly, a small son was lost en route, several babies were born and died as infants after their arrival and within twenty years the family would be decimated by an unspecified illness which swept their community in 1758 leaving only three surviving sons and a daughter.
The three sons would later serve in the revolutionary war and one of them went on to have my fourth great grandmother, born in 1783, a woman whose son had a daughter who moved from South Carolina to south Georgia and produced my great grandfather, the man whose surname I carry which is English rather than German or the Scots-Irish of my fourth great grandmother's married name.
If you can read that last bit and keep it straight, I commend you.
19 comments:
I have often wondered the same thing. Why did my ancestors cross the ocean? In recent generations, there are not a lot of risk takers so it's hard for me to imagine that I cam from people who would do something so daring.
You have a lot of detail about your family from a long time ago. Where did you get that much information?
It's odd how we end up in one place and not another, our path having been laid out before us by circumstances and people we generally have no clue about.
I kept it straight, ha! So many stories contributed to making us who we are today. For me, I knew when I was five years old that I would be moving to New York when I was old enough to make that decision happen. I just decided. We were visiting my aunt here, the one I took care of in her latter years. Looking back, the decision to move here from an island home, made when I was so young, had the force of inevitability.
Yes, my eyes crossed and my brain spun at that last paragraph, but I do commend the work you are putting in. Growing up I knew only the immediate family and as soon as I hear things like 'second cousin once removed' my eyes glaze over.
Good luck entangling the complicated branches to your family tree.
Having parents who both left their native country, I can say that they do indeed do it for a better life. After World War II, the country my parents were born in dealt with economic hardship and even civil war, so the decision to leave - and leave behind a lot of family - was difficult but necessary. It wasn't easy crossing an ocean and heading to a place they had little idea about, and a place where they faced hardship and even prejudice, but they bravely did it and they thrived.
Hi e, I still wonder how things and places come to be. I often wonder how much destiny plays a part.
It's so interesting to follow your family roots. My brother's death has taken the last of the information I still don't know about my Mother's 15 siblings and what brought her to America from Canada. It's not that she didn't tell me, and more than once; it's that I was too young to listen. My loss.
love
kj
I kept it straight eventually, but I had to read it twice. :) It is fascinating to consider the paths and choices that led to our own creation -- and to consider who we'd be (or more accurately, who might be here in our place) if those paths hadn't been taken. It's a mind-bender!
Looking at that last paragraph, your relatives and mine likely had contact.
Records...
I knew nothing when I started and have been reading a lot of history since then.
You were lucky to have such a strong sense of place.
That is an amazing story. They had a lot of courage.
Try going to the library and searching Ancestry. You might find clues or information and the librarian can help you locate other resources.
Oh my...Now that is interesting...
Nine generations ago members of both sides of my family left England in the 1850s because of an economic slump, sailed to NY and went further north in NYS. Established themselves there in ag.
I, in my twenties, descendedfrom the relatives who had stayed, did likewise in the 1960s with my new husband. In search of work. Sailed into NY.
We didn't feel adventurous, just had to follow opportunity. Never occurred to us how young we were to do this with no family to contact, earlier arrivals long out of touch. just our credentials to support us,a postdoc 2year position for him, nothing for me. But it was an adventure!
Undyingly glad we did it, too. I've had opportunities to do important, sometimes life saving work I'd never have had in the UK -- wrong class, wrong accent, despite great academic cred.
Remember the witness at the hearings saying much the same thing? She sounded like me, same origins, same voice, same region. Wonderful for me to hear her.
Very long comment from a new follower. You must have touched something deep. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing an important part of your story with me and others who read here. You are always welcome here.
Surprisingly, given my antipathy for other "logic" puzzles, keeping relationships straight seems easier for me, and as a result, your last paragraph made perfect sense to me. Maybe it's because I grew up with my dad often telling me of his family connections. He came from a very large family so there was a lot to discuss.
Wishing you continued good luck with your forays into your ancestors!
I think in many people crossed the ocean and did pretty desperate things becuase otherwise they would have starved . looking into my own ancestors I think that unless they got off your rear end and did something different, they'd be working as a labourer earning a pittance for their whole life!
'...feeling comfortable both in my skin and in my space.' That's a good line - I may respectfully steal it (with suitable credit) sometime!
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