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Living Up to Family Legacies

One is the sum of all that creates what you are – genes, heritage,
education, experience, wisdom, history, and view. Though I come from
meager Appalachian beginnings – God fearing parents and
grandparents who worked and dreamed for better for their children.
God has opened doors for me beyond my wildest dreams.
Within my genes He imprinted the memories of generations past that
reached to the corners of the world in every imaginable way – as
pilgrims, sea captains, explorers, clergy, merchants, founders,
musicians, soldiers, actors, writers, teachers, generals, peasants,
slaves, lords, ladies, kings, queens, and emperors.
From the days before the Roman Empire we have touched those who have
had a hand in forging the human collective forward. Across the world,
I can point to historical elements that weave their way into my
people, my life. I could stand at the feet of statues of many of them
in cities I hope one day to visit; or outside castles, palaces, or
buildings they have built that remain as a testament to their lives.
There were some good people, some bad, and many in between. In life,
He has allowed me to come to know many of their achievements that
have inspired me to strive to create my own and to learn from their
failures and follies.
In my three score and ten, I may not change the world as many of my
grandparents, uncles and aunts did. I may not lead great nations, nor
forge great conquests with my armies as many of them did. I may not
inspire religious dedication bringing the faithful to believe and
serve as some of them did.
I will do though, what is within my power to continue carrying the
light of the family spark each and every day. For centuries the spark
passed, it has inspired men to the call of battle; it inspired men to
write and say words that changed the direction of the world.
I pray just one line I write, one performance I share, one person I
inspire holds fast with the impact as long as some of my
grandfathers’ and grandmother’s actions continuing their tradition.
I am blessed to be a descendant of many great men and women. We all
owe those behind us a great debt for what they gave us.
Take the time to remember and learn from them.

Colorful roots

As I began my search for ancestors, I never knew what wonders the stories would open to me. Seeing history come to life through people to which I am related helped to make historical events more than just words upon a page.
I am sure that some of the tales have grown with time and the accuracy of some would not hold up in a court of law, but for a 10-year-old and avid history buff, reading about an uncle who traveled with the Lewis and Clarke expedition, grandparents who were Underground Railroad stationmasters, or discovering a long-lost branch of the family that no one knew existed gave me such a thrill.
My search carried me to homes where members of my family have lived since the country was founded. I have stood with a musket in hand on the battlements where my ancestors staved off the Cherokees when the United States were still British colonies. I have touched the soil which once ran red with their blood as they fell fighting the red coats.
Among my forebearers have been presidents, congressmen, governors, state legislators, sheriffs, soldiers, slaves, cowboys, Native Americans, farmers, poets, businessmen, sailors, lawyers, educators and even royalty.
With each turn of the page through another generation, my search would become more fascinating from my infamous grandmother Lady Godiva to the Scottish independence leader – King Robert de Bruce.
 Years ago, a distant cousin enlightened me to an aspect of our family I never knew about how some of our ancestors from Portugal came to the Americas even before the Pilgrims settled in eastern North Carolina in the late 1500s. Their settlements were destroyed at some point, and survivors intermarried with Native American tribes and eventually migrated to the mountainous areas in western North Carolina and Southern Virginia, remaining together as a tribe.
Being on opposite sides of a fight was repeated time and time again in my family going back thousands of years. On both sides of the American Civil War and Revolutionary War, the frontier battles, and in the old country – the war for Scottish Independence, English against the Vikings or French or Spanish, or Germans against the Romans and those peoples against so many more adversaries.
With grandfathers spanning from the Viking Rollo to the Russian Rurik, struggles and conflicts across centuries, principalities, faiths and continents. 
My grandfather Ernulf de Hesdin (died 1097), was a French knight who fought alongside my grandfather William the Conqueror in the conquest of England. He was richly rewarded by the King with land holdings under William as evidenced in the Doomsday Book. He joined King William Rufus in his efforts to conquer Normandy in 1093 held by his brother, my uncle Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy. The campaign was stalled by the involvement of my grandfather King Phillip I of France on the side of Robert. However, in 1095 Ernulf was unjustly accused with joining my grandfather Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, in a baron’s revolt against my uncle King William Rufus. His champion succeeded in winning in a trial by combat but he was so disgusted by the accusations, so he never returned to England. He joined the First Crusade to the Holy Land (1095-1099) and gave his life at the legendary Siege of Antioch in 1097. Ernulf was a forebearer of Scotland’s House of Stuart which eventually ruled also England and Ireland.
After the death of my cousin England’s King Henry V (1387-1422), his wife, my grandmother Queen Catherine De Valois (1401 –1437), daughter of my grandfather France’s King Charles VI (1368 –1422), was dowager queen raising my uncle King Henry VI (1421-1471) of England and France. Queen Catherine was in her 20s and the nobles wishing to control my grandmother and the 6-month-old king passed a law that if anyone married the queen, they forfeited their lands and possessions. The law was in effect until the king was an adult and he could approve the marriage. The law did not control the heart though as Catherine fell in love with a young welsh named Owen Meredith Tudor or ap Maredudd ap Tudur (1397-1461). He was a descendant of Ednyfed Fychan, and thus part of one of the most powerful families in 13th to 14th-century Wales. The couple had six children including my grandfather Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond. While the Plantagenet Dynasty (1154-1485) began its 30-year War of the Roses between the Yorks and the Lancasters that would take Owen’s life as he was killed by Yorkists, my York grandfather King Edward IV (1442-1483) was the last Plantagenet in our direct line to rule as his brother, my Uncle Richard would take the crown from my uncle King Edward V (1470– 1483) as he and his brother died as boys held captive in the tower of London. The Tudor line extended under Edmund, though he died of plaque, he left his widow pregnant with the future Tudor heir my grandfather King Henry VII who would raise an army and depose Uncle Richard at the Battle of Bosworth where King Richard III died ending the Plantagenet dynasty, and where the crown was placed on a Tudor’s head from 1485-1603.
I discovered these stories long after the passing of my late parents who once traveled with me from courthouse to cemetery, house to battlefield, to learn from whence we came. I so would have loved to have shared these and so many more stories with them.
Once our loved ones are gone, however, we are left with only the paper trail and some remnants of memories in the wind.
While history is a wonderful place to spend time seeing the colors that make up your family tree, if you would like to know the story of your family, start with those around you. Don’t forget that those stories which are right at your fingertips will one day be history, too.
You might just wish you had written them down.

Peeking through a keyhole into the past

I will never forget when I was about 9 years old, I began a fascination with learning more about family history.
It began with a third-grade book report on World War I hero Sergeant York. As I read his story, I was taken by the similarities between the area of his living in the Valley of the Three Folks of the Wolf near Jamestown and ours in the Valley below the Gravelly Spur. I had a cousin who also shared that name, so I soon discovered a loose family connection.
This was the spark that drove me to a greater desire of learning about our family experience and gathering the available data and thus I became an amateur genealogist. Back in those days, there was no internet, so you went from relative to relative, graveyard to cemetery, courthouse to courthouse, and library to state archives in search of the pieces.
My parents were supportive within the reason of affordable travel in helping me on my quest. Coming from two Appalachian families, I did however pose some problems. The stoic nature of our peoples, led to there being a limited desire to talk about the past. I attribute this mainly to not wishing to relive the hardships which tended to interweave each story. Much of the oral tradition of sharing great tales of past family heroes had faded and many stories had been lost. I was able to gather nearer in time information and find many clouded tales of past ancestors that were on shaky ground. Many of my older relatives were contemporaries of Sergeant York, and their husbands or brothers went along as well training, fighting and some dying in World War I. A few stories of the Civil War, trips to the western frontier, and early settlement days did manage to find spots in different folks’ memories.
I did so much of this, at about 13, I was able to publish a short book highlighting what I had discovered at that point which many of our relatives purchased. Though I stopped the serious aspects of documentation and collection in my late teens, I have never stopped the pursuit of greater knowledge of my ancestors.
The advent of the internet has proved to be a wonderful resource to break barriers that came into my path at 12. That has it challenges as well, the information is only as good as the person who put it into the system. I always seek to find the correlating source materials that confirm their conclusions.
In recent weeks I have been blessed to make break throughs on several family lines that have had me stumped for decades. Often times locating one name or one location can open a door that allows you to peer deeper and deeper into the past.
I have managed to break down some of those blocks of late. One line which halted in the Civil War era had stood with no hope until I found some old notes I took from my grandmother and one of her sisters which gave me some potential siblings names. The combination of names in an internet search helped me in two different cases to open the lock and find the lines. I have located new cousins, I never knew and found photos I didn’t know existed of my ancestors.
One was such an amazing key that it opened up a door and walked me back before the time of Christ. Two millennia, I could not believe what I was finding and learning about each subsequent generation. Much of this was compiled by other genealogists, while some was new data, I was finding thanks to search engines. As I mentioned, I am always cautious about conclusions unless I can check the support documents. With that in mind, I traveled back to the founding of Jamestown, and across pond to England, Ireland, Scotland and through the centuries back to the Druids, the Saxons, the Welsh, the Normans, the Vikings, the Franks, the Jewish, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians just to name a few. I learned of ancestors who walked beside Popes, fought in the Crusades or alongside conquerors, ruled over principalities and dukedoms that I never heard of. I learned of ancestors whose lives ended in execution, mysterious murders or in battles with the goal of consolidating ruling power.
To many such history is of no interest to their daily lives, but to me and many like me, it brings our heart joy to know the names, see the images or depictions of those whose shoulders we stand upon. More than all that though knowing their stories.
Today, I am much richer within my heart because now I can literally travel across modern-day Europe and when I am in a country I have never been in before, there is likely a place, assuming they survived time and wars, where there’s may be a surviving house, castle, historic place, a graveyard, a monastery or convent, a statue, or museum containing artifacts that I can visit, point to and say ‘This is part of me and my story.’
I hope you always carry in your heart a bountiful number of family stories and history, and if not, you could with a bit of effort.