Genetic Echoes

(Author's note: Try not to yell at the screen. It's just frickin' genealogy- not politics. Peace out.)

As always, loyally unedited.

What was I thinking?

Too many Golden Arches and Kin Jeong Un (check spelling- my Korean is terrible) style banners hanging off buildings for comfort??? Yeah, me too. It's hard to know what it all means. It's hard not to hope that whatever form of megalomania this is will pass, but in the meantime... 

Well, I thought I'd take a look around. What the heck is out there...genealogically speaking that is...            

What? You thought I was gonna go all political?        

Believe me, I'm not gonna start re-arranging sea shells on the beach- too I'm way too "chicken nuggets" for that. Besides I've done my time with potential presidential assassins before (Thank you Shannon Rodgers Guess you useless piece of self centered tart-o-lini) - 

Though seriously, sea shell gate? Dude, come on...                 

Anyway, improve your ratings. Stop being such an ass. In other words...

Dude, get over yourself...                    

    

Now I have always (and still do) consider myself to be proudly Red, White, and Blue. It's tough to change that- I mean my folks didn't fall off the Mayflower for nothin', and they, along with twenty or so of my patriot ancestors acknowledged by the Daughters of the American Revolution have to count for something; they  still very much flow in my blood. But lately, ya know after seeing "who gets pardoned for their crimes and who doesn't and back again and so on and so forth..." well, it's kind of caused me to take another look at all those "patriot ancestors" of mine. 

See, I told you this was genealogy and not politics.

Hey, I am not here to "dis" on the dead- let alone my own folk. However, this early mid century neo-lithic Orwellian style 1984 Instagram America has caused me to look back at some of those Revolutionary War ancestors of mine - and to see them in maybe not the most favorable light. Again though, I didn't walk their shoes, again, I have always (and still do) consider George III to be The Mad King George, who, if nothing else was a Giant Dickhead when it came to the colonies and, not doubt had something organically wrong with his noble porphyria ridden crazy ass self. 

(Sorry, George...no offense intended to your no doubt very real mental health issues.)

Anyway, what I've begun to see among the throng of my Revolutionary Ancestors is a group of people who, subject to the machinations of the Mad King, were forced into two camps- those folks who wanted to fight for change (whatever they behooved or needed that change to be) and those who, if they didn't fight or "take up arms" against the Mad King and his Kind were persecuted, burned out, bought out, maligned, or even jailed for not doing so.

Ya know, like rearranging sea shells.

So let me get this straight- to be Red, White, and Blue to the core means "Join or Die???" Hmmm...interesting concept. So all that Bill of Rights Free speech stuff only applied to the said revolutionaries of 1776 if they said and did exactly what their RW promulgators said had to be so "or else?"

Yeah, that kind of paints things in a different light. 

All that "Age of Reason" stuff seems a bit less than reasonable. Still, people gotta eat, so I figure my folks being some of the first "flag-waving-hungry-in-the-belly" types probably signed up easily to protect their own hungry asses. Okay..

But not all of them.

II.

I have always felt them in my blood. 

For the most part, I have ignored them. I mean after all, who doesn't hate the Red Coats and the Mad King? We all know that they treated our kin like dogs and taxed them unfairly...right? Yet, hidden there, and frankly not too far back among Ye Olde Branches, I felt a different choir singing. I was always told that they were wrong. I was always told to ignore whatever they had done as not admirable and to regard it as next to cowardly. But was it? Just who were they? Just who are these people still coursing in my blood right next to all those "Join or Die" folks on this side (or the hungry side) of the argument.

The Loyalists.

Yes, I was a bit surprised when I first saw them at first too- there in the branches of my family tree. I suppose you could say that I was even a little bit intrigued by them. Wtf? I mean how does one leave the bonny lands of Connecticut and the Berkshires and migrate to Quebec in the 1790s? Why? What would cause this? Were these the very people I was always taught were near on to be naught more than yellow-bellied cowards?

Yeah, I don't think so.

I guess you probably wouldn't have found them at a "No Kings" rally today but I like to think that they just figured that they could wait out Old Mad King George and his subsequent monarchs for a bit- and that things would somehow eventually improve. I suppose they got tired of being forced to sign Oaths of Allegiance to ideas or purports that they weren't 100% sure of themselves and were maybe tired of being persecuted for not doing so. They must have had either an incredible faith in God and Great Britain or realized that, in the American colonies, they were up against a tidal wave that would soon over take them.

Yes, and they aren't so far behind in my "genetic echo" either - so close that I can recall their voices in my bloodline:

It was an easy shot to look back:        

I mean..."Oh Canada" and all that?    

What the heck ?   

Me? Canadian?     

Below is a plethora of genealogical images of how Canada comes to me:

Let's start with Grandpa Isaac.

 

Isaac's daughter, Mary Lawrence, my great-great-great grandmother, born in Quebec. Seems fairly Canadian to me.

Grandma Mary Lawrence, getting hitched to Grandpa Washington Hoyt - in , you guessed it, "Quebec."

                            

(It’s a surreal moment when you realize that the "Join or Die" spirit of 1776 wasn’t just a slogan; for many, it was a literal ultimatum.  But hey, let's talk about the genealogy here. Who has answers for any of the rest of it? I sure as Hell don't.)                   

Her daughter, Mary Lawrence Hoyt mother of Mary Hoyt, and wife of Charles Wilcox

Mary Hoyt Wilcox was the mother of Dora "Ono" Wilcox - my great grandmother.

Looking at your "patriot ancestors" alongside your "Loyalist" kin provides a much more human perspective than the textbooks allow. History tends to paint Loyalists as either villains or cowards, but many were simply people who valued order over chaos, or who found the "Age of Reason" to be decidedly unreasonable when it involved burning down the neighbor's barn for refusing to sign a friggin' oath.        

So just who were these folks ?    

They were mine.

Keeping with that"string-of-consciousness" genealogical diagram of screenshots of how "they" got from "there to me:"      

Dora "Ono" Wilcox mother of Frank White Lee - my grandfather.

Frank White Lee, father of Yvonne - mom.

                    

.....

And so on down to moi...  Ye Old Canadian. LOL.

          

So be they Patriots or be they Loyalist - It looks like when it comes to my mom's folks, some of them well,

they just left.

III.

I guess living in this Trumped-up world we live in now got me wondering, even trying to examine what the motivations for all those sides must have been. I figure "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" had to apply to all of their points of view to be a valid concept. And I admit, these Loyalist have fascinated me. So much so, that as I stared at a picture of The Orange Kaiser glinting in the sunshine from one of our public buildings I got to thinking- not much has changed. 

George III would have been proud.

I wondered too, just how, (if needed), would I ever get from "bonny Connecticut and the Berkshires" to a place that made more sense to me should the occasion ever arrive? (And believe me, I certainly hope it never does...)

And then I stumbled on this:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/dual-citizenship-eh-under-new-law-millions-of-americans-may-now-also-be-considered-canadian

Wtf? I could apply for Canadian citizenship based on changes to Canadian law in December 2025?  I could still retain my US citizenship BUT I might have an exist strategy should these fruited plains become more hostile to my own concept of "Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Dang. 

I really do like maple syrup...but ya know, there's a whole lot of Kansas Red, White and Blue in my blood too.

However, all this got me thinking about a conversation I had with a relative who said that his granddaughter was having gay or trans friends in school. He didn't judge this, but I could sense he found it curious. When I commented that it was great that this young lady was meeting people and befriending people from different walks of life, he replied, "Yes, it's good that she's getting to know a lot of fucked up people." Huh??? By "fucked up" he meant damaged. By "fucked up" he meant less than. 

Not sure that version of "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is my version. I prefer to follow the version that says we're all the same. (If there still is one anyway...)

So I checked out the application. Not that Canada is perfect- far from it. But the idea that I could use genealogy to get outta Dodge if I needed to did intrigue me. I could easily go Canadian in a pinch. It isn't even that far back. And, after all, it looks like applying for dual Canadian-American citizenship is just like filling out another lineage society application. 

AND we all know "me" likes to do that. LOL.

I don't know that I will do this- it's frickn' expensive if nothing else, and, for better or worse, I am far more Red,White and Blue more than I am Maple Syrup. There certainly are no easy answers. Through all of this too, I  have had to ask myself, not only why my ancestors left for Canada, but why the heck they didn't stay. 

You see, they came back. To Iowa of all places. Bunch of dang Buckeyes?

I guess folks were already living in their old house in the Berkshires??

Wink!

☮