Myth into History: Genealogy for my families

With a new year already ten days old, I want to write more.  To incorporate it with my current genealogy research, I thought to write some blog pieces for family on our family.  I had thought about it a while ago and didn't feel I had enough information.  I have finally realized I will NEVER have enough information. So, I am beginning, as I had the idea a long time ago and just want it to take off.

Before I forget, I need to start with how I started with my interest in family history.

I grew up in a small town in eastern Washington State, with a few stops elsewhere which widened my world view.  When I was 5 and a half my parents moved us to the Netherlands for a year.  I went to a Dutch Montessori Kindergarten with my brother.  Yes, they spoke Dutch and hence, we kind of did too.  We returned to Washington State the year later and my world view had been changed.   When we were in 4th and 3rd grade we moved again to Connecticut.

In Connecticut we were exposed to US history like never before.  One day when my class had a field trip to Mystic, my mother mentioned that I was related to John Wayne and the Billingtons on the Mayflower.   That was probably the beginning.   I don't believe I ever got to do a family history project for school. I always heard about classes that did that, and my kids were basically the same.  Never got to do it.  I felt cheated! 

Around the time I graduated from college, my family headed east for a huge family reunion.  It was a Zimmerly Morrison reunion as the two families that melded to be one.  Now, those of you who know John Wayne's real name will realize this is how I am related to the Morrisons. And it is by marriage. I have cousins however who are related by blood.  And they are cool stories which I will get to later.

I got a copy of my Dad's cousin's genealogy notes for his family.  His mother's family went way back... especially her father's family which the cousin had researched.  Edythe Zimmerly Stephens had done a smash bang job of family history long before the computer and Internet.  Yes, lots of research and amazing information from libraries, books, wills and government records!

When we moved to the greater Washington DC area in late 1988,  I got a research pass for National Archives  and went into do some research. I was really very intrigued by my husband's history. His grandfather had given me a lot of data that I wrote down, but I wanted to find proof to understand the story better.  I found that proof and the census intrigued me.

I eventually got a copy of family tree maker and started putting in information.  It was an on again off again project that  wove its way through years of my life.  Woven again by moves overseas and the time consuming efforts such moves are.  Rather than researching the family, soon we were adding to the family and rather than researching and documenting health and illnesses, we were knee deep in the fighting of illness.  The next foray was a celebration of health and I committed to the future by digging more into the roots.  The Internet opened up and while in Finland I combed rootsweb and usgenweb  in their early stages trying to find more of my father's mother's family.   Thanks to researchers on message boards I was sent in the right direction and kind of linked her family to a large family which we have purportedly linked to Sweden from a Royal expedition in 1654 to Delaware. 

About this time I also made contact with a third cousin who is an established researcher who was straightening out issues with early Zimmerly  family history. We have stayed in contact and have still to meet!

I am realizing that as I write, each little part needs expanding.  Ah, wonderful, more things to write about!   But where I am heading in my head is that, last year in searching for another part of my paternal Grandmother's family, I reached out to a researcher who had information on our Preston line.  She believed we were related and that she came from the last relative I had found's sister and that I could build a circumstantial file of proofs to proof the relationship.  Her research on her part of the family (that we did tie into) reached back to a Revolutionary War patriot, who hadn't been documented for DAR, and his history went back even further with family tie ins to the Salem episodes.

Our conversations on email  encouraged my cousin to send her documentation into DAR and she became a member.  I am still sitting on all of this, believing I will take another line into DAR as it will be easier to work with!   But with the same year being the advent of Ancestry DNA, I decided to jump in as a way to compare Ancestry autosomal with the Family Tree DNA Autosomal which I had convinced some people to take.

Well,  my first actual family tree link with genetics proved the link to Salem.  I matched genes with a person who seems to only match my family tree in the Jacob Towne line.  We both are great great....  grandchildren of Jacob Towne.  And this story will go further enough to tell you that Jacob Towne was the brother of three of the condemned women in the Salem witch trials.   Rebecca Towne Nourse, Mary Cloyse  and Sarah Estey, (spellings differ at times).   Rebecca and Mary died,  Sarah survived due to the halt of trials and executions. 

I am still chewing on this. I have figured out a few more distant cousins via DNA.  Much is way back, but we all have little parts of those individuals which link us as family.  This DNA research makes history real in  a way it hasn't before. I am tugged into the story a bit more. I want to find the proofs, the written story to back up the writing I carry in me.  Somehow, the poetics of the GACT alphabet soup  warms the spirit of history within me. 

Response to APHIS, HUSIS, PeTA

APHIS is getting ready to change the rules.   PLEASE read the following posters to see how it will affect you!


Explanations of the APHIS rule changes, cute posters!

The effect on hobby breeders in not inconsequential. Many are saying that they will no longer be breeding.  Where will we get a dog, if we don't want to be part of the insistant "rescue" that pervades the dog world.  I have issues with much of it, which is a result of our "throwaway" society. 
That is not the topic here. Many of us want a temperment or health  that we know or at least know what to look for!  

Look at the photographs on these posters! They are amazing!  These dogs live together with the woman who put together the posters.

PLEASE,  take a moment to go comment on the APHIS website before they change the law.

Thank you!

Comment on the APHIS Proposed rule change.

Turmoil and undercurrents

The epic storm hitting Alaska isn't the turmoil I had in mind. However, it is indicative of the turmoil that is stealing quietly into many minds these days.

Everyone seems to be flattening themselves down, as if a huge storm is approaching. Storms of society, the various financial and societal issues, education costs, job losses, financial strifes of various countries, cultural turmoil is what it seems to be.

People are even starting to discuss the "feeling", some kind of like waiting for a shoe to drop...where the heck did that one come from?

Italy, for Europe may be the shoe to drop. I feel for Papandreou as he was just trying to find an out,*hear me out* an out so that they would all realize either they buy in with the austerity measures, which given the protests they were NOT... but when you have to vote and put your name behind it.... then you have to think and plan and not just be wishful thinking.

These kids have been going to school and looking forward to being part of society and look, no jobs. Look they are living at home. There are NO youth jobs in Europe outside of a family business. Every job is part of the "system" full benefits, etc. No one gets a barely minimum wage job.

I wish some program would hit all of this and explain BETTER for the rest of the world what the situation is over there. And, how as one Greek writer called it, that Greece is the canary in the mine... not the odd one out.

Greece Riots to Occupy Wallstreet to worldwide protests Connect the dots!

How can they fail to connect the dots? We are sending more and more of our children to college with huge pressures to do well. Sending them to testing centers, pushing them through the rigours of college prep, then through the mill that is college and they come out to what? Unemployment and underemployment is rampent among the newly graduated from college. This is even more true in Europe, specifically Greece. The young do not have jobs. They live at home and are supported by mom and dad. They keep trying. Jobs in Europe are protected. In most cases there is no part time work or work for teens outside of possibly family businesses. I may be simplifying this horribly, but with the benefits attached to real jobs, they are hard to find and not available to youths.

These individuals who grew up with the promise of a future, worked hard and now can't find anything are disillusioned. They have stayed in school and gone through the gamut and can't find work now that they are "finished."

what do we do? They are the ones protesting, along with those others who are affected by lost pensions, lost savings, lost health care, where they have watched the rising excesses of the past decade only to watch it all fall apart as they were to join into the fray.

Where do we go from here? Hopefully the Ghandian way. Nonviolent protest. However, there is so much pent up anger about the whole situation that it seems to be a tinder box out there.
When they feel they have so little to lose, then they will do take chances.

The protesters need to police their own ranks and take care of the violent, destructive forces. They will get them no where fast.

This topic bears some more thought. And since no one seems to be reading what I say, I think I have a bit more time to chew on it all.

Thank you Andy Rooney

I just finished listening to Andy Rooney's last 60 Minutes piece. Wow. How can one sum up 33 years of writing presented by a writer on TV? The everyday things stated in a grumpy but honest way on National TV? Thank you Andy for the laughs and tears.

We have gotten to see ourselves grow older. We have a few icons who have been allowed to continue to work on into ages that many of us will never see. We hear about others our age who pass suddenly not able to live the long lives some do. But in the case of CBS, we have the chance to watch those we have watched since high school. Yes, Andy, I dated myself there. So now that I am able to join AARP, now you can retire. Thank you for allowing us to watch and learn all these years.

If I ever see you at a restaurant, you may rest assured that I will not interrupt your meal.

September 11 one decade later

Where were you? The words have been repeated today, over and over. I am sure we all remember. It is as indellible as the image of the towers falling.



That morning, as usual I had walked my second grader and my 6th grader to the corner where they crossed to walk to school. My daughter's friend's mother and I decided to walk around the block. We kept revelling in the beauty of the day. The sky was a deep autumn blue. THe air was clear and crisp. It was stunningly a beautiful day. We ended up after the walk at my house to drink some coffee.


We were talking about something and my husband called. He said, are you watching Today?

I said no, been out on a walk. He said a plane has flown into the World Trade Center. And I think the second had just hit when he called me.

We turned on the TV. It was mayhem.

In the jumble of the morning it all seemed so inconceivable. But we knew it was a terror attack. I know that some of us didn't want to jump and point fingers. We remembered Oklahoma City. But, having lived overseas in the midst of the Dar es Salaam and Nairobi that the unthinkable was possible. And we knew the name that was behind it.

Soon there was report of a smoking trail near the Pentagon, perhaps an explosion.

I remember watching the tv and seeing before the people commenting as we all watched, that Tower 1 had fallen. There was a shimmering as the dust gathered and blue sky was behind the smoke and dust. I gasped. It's gone, it fell.

So much has happened in the ten years since.

My thoughts and prayers with all those who lost loved ones on this day, for all who helped in the searches, for all those who serve their country in the wake of this event.

We all choose ways to remember and serve.

We will never forget.
Never forgotten.
Forever grateful... for our freedoms, liberty and lives.

Last new school year

My baby is heading off to celebrate her last night of summer. Tomorrow is Labor Day. Summer ends in a smoky, steamy, summer eve in an arcane human ritual known as the bonfire.
I didn't even attempt to say no. Her father did... however, it wasn't strong and we make choices.
Fire brought us to where we are and it is part of those rituals of passing.

I kind of wish we were in Finland... talk about bonfires. But, yeah, they were on midsummer!