Ancestral politics

(Author's note: If you want to understand some of the how and why of what you think or do, simply study your ancestors' politics.)

As always, politically unedited.

Wanna know a secret? 

"A genealogist does not a politician make."

 Yeah, I know, I know. It may sound pretty obvious and even reductive on some level, but believe me it's true. The genealogist has no business in politics.

The reasons for this are many. First and foremost is that any seasoned genealogist (Okay, call me old...) has had, over the course of many years, the points of view of so many different family members and "branches" to "explore and defend." The genealogical truth is that as families and indeed as with people in general, it's pretty evident that one size does not fit all.

Now I'm not gonna go on about those raucous dinner table or backyard barbecue arguments. You know the ones, like about Stevenson or Eisenhower in '56. Frankly, those are as old as time itself and sadly will likely never change. However, as a genealogist, I think it behooves us to explore our political ancestry to see what we're made of, where we come from, and how well we might (outside of ignorance and damnable bias) carry ourselves at that next round table of backyard family barbecue arguments. Yay! I can hardly wait!

 

Like most folks, and like this great nation, I grew up in a divided house. Raised on the knees of a Civil War widow and very Mayflower great-grandmother, she being a "Red-eyed Republican," (a staunchly conservative Republican) her views seemed more of a religion than a political party. This was a woman who smoothed with great pride the creases in the folded pictures of Barry Goldwater in the pages of the Long Beach Press Tribune. She was a woman who never missed a meeting of the Women's Auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic or a Decoration Day celebration (an older term for Memorial Day). In some ways, she was a relic of another era - both good and bad. She embodied beautiful traditions and utter bravery of cause. Indeed, her sense of what it means to be an American has always been foundational in my life. 

She could also be stubbornly narrow minded.

   

     

However, on the genealogical playing field of my ancestry she was not alone or the only voice. That other voice was sometimes harder to distinguish (he was physically disabled), but no less passionate. He was my paternal grandfather, and he championed the labor rights and Democratic causes of a young man and not those of a someone born from a war-torn generation or two before. His were the causes for the working man: better pay, more jobs, and food on the table. 

For my grandfather, "his" politics were the people of the Dust Bowl Depression. As a young man he was full of ideals about making the world a better place; a world more fair to all people. In the late 1920s, he took to the road motoring about the Kansas countryside promoting the Great Chautauquas of the day. These huge revivalist meeting would bring together both the religious and the secular under one tent to learn and listen to new ideas. He was active in the unions, advocating for Roosevelt, and eventually being married by his friend and mentor, a local Kansas Democratic Congressman.   

He too, could also be very, very stubborn.

Can I help it if that Democratic idealist chose to marry the daughter of the very Republican Civil War widow mentioned above?

So was one side of my family more "American" than the other? Was one side necessarily more patriotic than the other? Yeah, tough call? 

And this was just Dad's side. Egads.

Yes, as genealogists, as family historians, we not only have to learn to explore the historicity of many points of view, we are also called upon by all of our ancestors to defend the finer points of each of them. So I guess that brings me round to "revisionist history." And yes, I know that it isn't genealogy per se, and that it should not directly effect how we see or study the political (or even religious) views of our ancestors. However, how we as individuals interpret or "tell" our ancestor's politics definitely effects how we feel about our ancestors themselves and indeed how we might preserve their memory. 

A genealogist's interpretation of historical facts (which can be influenced by revisionist perspectives) might color their (our our own) understanding of ancestral politics. More so, how we deal with the way we relate to others over our own family history is an obligation of tolerance and understanding we have to put out there for those future generations. 

It tells us something about ourselves.

Now, as a Mayflower descendant, I have always disliked the notion of "The 1619 Project." (A re-interpretation of history centering around previously marginalized perspectives and acknowledging historical injustices) It's a concept of American history somewhat proselytized by the New York Times a couple of years ago. For myself, I tend to agree with those historians who found "1619" a wee bit flawed and or lacking a fuller perspective. 

(We all know that I tend to be more of a "1620" kinda guy.)

True enough, too, is that I was greatly chagrined when my Mayflower brethren (at their great tribunals at Plymouth) felt politically compelled to change the name of Governor William Bradford's aptly named "Plymouth Plantation" to "Plimouth Patuxet Museum" all in some attempt to dispel the specter of not including the Wampanoag people in the area history. Neither have I enjoyed watching statues of Confederate soldiers that have stood for years fall to the ground in an attempt to ignore that part of who we were as a nation. It's always seemed ironic to me that even my all too Yankee great-grandmother (whom I wrote about above) would have never asked for the statues of the men who imprisoned her husband at a Richmond in 1864 to have ever come down - so the idea that they should "be removed" has never set well with me.

It seemed odd to me also when a few years ago Mt.McKinley came to be called Denali again, though I'm not sure why in this particular instance of "changing the name" of the mountain mattered. I guess my question is and always has been: What were these things first called? If the mountain was first called "Denali," then let it be so...even as much as I prefer it to be called Mt. McKinley - it should be called by its true name. This maxim should hold true for "Plymouth Plantation" as well. Let all things, in so far as possible, be called by their correct historical names. Further, renaming military bases, or pulling down statues based solely on the need to forget past historical transgressions seems (generally) superfluous to me; it seems "extra" and, yes, even wrong. 

But is it? I'm not the injured party. I cannot say.

I see this now on each side of the genealogical and political fence, though. Now we have "Gulf of America" as opposed to "Gulf of Mexico." (A renaming in recent months) It seems that both sides of the political spectrum choose to ignore the historicity of original names or to rename them to suit some particular agenda or vanity. It seems supercilious to change a name baptized into existence in the mid-1500s. Yes, even wrong. In this case, who was the injured party? I can't say as I ever knew. I suppose in truth it should be called whatever the Maya or Aztec called it way back when.

Whatever it was named, let it be.

Well, there I have gone and done it. I have allowed "the political genealogist" loose in the house and broken my own maxim that the two (genealogy and politics) do not go together. The trouble is that we do need to study the views of our ancestors to understand what drove them, to understand what their troubles were, and what viewpoints they needed or used to navigate their own lives. It's the only way we can understand how it is that we've arrived at our own. And hopefully, in the end, to help us to understand and not simply discount the political views of someone else. 

  

Imagine that! Genealogy: An ancestral source of reigniting tolerance by understanding the lives of those who came before us. 

I do wonder when tolerance went out of style. It seems a concept both well ahead and well past its time.

☮

 The Great Unwelcome

Above: William Penn arrives in Pennsylvania

(Authors note: This is straight up family history. If it's not your deal my suggestion is that you bail out quickly before you get caught in the web. Peace out.)

As always, historically unedited.

Okay, I confess. I get bored. Let's face it; not having a genealogical problem, unusual family tale, or some mysterious ancestral conundrum on my plate just doesn't make for a happy camper. Enter one bored old man with too much time on his hands and not a normal hobby, like, say, butterfly collecting. Or maybe it's just that sometimes those dang dead folks don't seem to want to leave me alone? Who knows? So I guess that's why I just couldn't resist. I had to reach out. I couldn't leave it be.

     

You see, the recent discovery that my lineage to William Buckman (1650-1716) who arrived on the good ship Welcome alongside that industrious Quaker character of history, Mr. William Penn – is quite traceable, has nagged at me a bit. Remember that genealogical boredom I mentioned? And seeing as its been awhile since I attempted to join a lineage society (which is basically an organization where membership is based on proving descent from a specific historical person or group) I knew I was gonna go out on a limb. So when I noticed that the Welcome Society of Pennsylvania was within the realm of possibilities for submitting to and joining up with, "well-come on" (lol), I jumped off the boat at the chance.           

      

I quickly scanned their requirements, which consist mostly of the usual blah, blah, blah about providing sufficient original documentation in relation to secondary sources to "satisfy the society's genealogist." Yeah, whatever. I don't see a problem there. I mean, it's not like I'm not serious. However, when I read the next requirement: "For those who live out of the area, three letters of recommendation from prominent members in their respective communities or from other lineage societies," I felt the Welcome start to take on a bit of water.

        

Seriously? To even apply? Yeah, no thanks. I followed up with a brief email to that revered society asking if there was any room for wiggling out of the three letters. Um, in a word, "no." The Welcome Society requires their applicants to be unequivocally without any "wiggle."

Most unwelcoming.

This was interesting to me. Having submitted to and been approved by other lineage societies several times over, I'd never encountered this need for "Letters of Recommendation." One would have thought they might have accepted "three proofs of previously accepted lineage society applications" instead. But no... And all this for the wannabe Quaker Oats guy? While I laughingly applaud the wonderful elitism and hobnob snobbery of it all, the idea of having to grovel for "letters" like a Gen Z job seeker seemed a bit too pedantic for the process. (No offense to Gen Z intended).

Yeah, they can kiss my grits.

So, in light of this (or because of it), I have decided to demonstrate, by as much original documentation as I can successfully post here, my line to William Buckman and the good ship Welcome on my own and for myself. As far as that particular lineage society goes, they should keep their rubber chicken lunch forums and pseudo-superiority complex unto themselves and the 'Great Unwiggled.' (It's not like they offer anything particularly unique, and given that my line to "Grandpa Bill" is quite easily traceable) Indeed, I will simply sew my Quaker oats elsewhere. It all sorta makes me wonder if Mister William Penn would have approved of such an "unwelcoming"...but as usual, I digress.

So let's get started: I figure the best way to do this is to take it generation by generation in hope of finding a confluence of documents (one or two) that connects each to the next. (Did ya get all that?) 

In a way, it kind of goes like this:

Generation One: "William Buckman and Elizabeth Wilson"

 Generation Two: "Elizabeth, daughter of William Buckman and Elizabeth his wife, who married Zebulon Heston II"

Generation Three: "Zebulon Heston III, son of Zebulon Heston II and Elizabeth, his wife, who married Sarah Burgess."

  

Generation Four: "John, son of Zebulon Heston III and Sarah Burgess, his wife, who married Elizabeth Randall."

Generation Five: Margaret, daughter of John Heston and Elizabeth, his wife, who married Henry Schooley.

 

   

      

Generation Six: Reuben Schooley, son of Margaret Heston and her husband Henry Schooley. Reuben, who married Mary Peek.

Generation Seven: "Hester Schooley, daughter of Reuben Schooley and his wife Mary Peek. Hester, who married John H. Record."

     Above: Hester Schooley and John H. Record

        

I've pretty much stopped here. I mean going on down my paternal "Record" line while required for any lineage society application seems redundant for the purposes of this blog post. I just wanted to show that the line from William Buckman really doesn't have a lot of holes in it. Yes, I can see where there needs to be more connective tissue between this generation and the next, but quite honestly, if it proves out this well...it looks pretty stinking good.

In fact, it looks quite welcoming.

Oatmeal cookies for everyone!

END

☮

 

The French Connection

...and other drugs. 

Above: Hester Schooley Record 1860-1942

(Author's note: Sometimes family history just plans to stupefy you. It leaves you wandering up the road, asking, "What the Hell just happened?")

As always, unabashedly unedited...

THERE'S JUST NO WAY around it. 

The truth, too, is that for the most part, very little of it has anything to do with me. Further, 'the why or how' answer of how I came to know anything about Dan or anything about his family is as much a mystery today as it was a year ago - and even as to how we would have any genetic tie at all. 

There isn't one. 

All of it has seemed not only genealogically random but truly quite incredible. 

As they say, there's only one place to start, and that's at the beginning. I'm sure, though, that I've written about some of it before, and written about the peculiar DNA match that caused me to reach out in the first place. (Please forgive me for repeating myself.) It was (or is) one of those DNA matches that (somehow) matches up with both my mom and dad, and one that frankly just didn't make sense to me. However, I was curious and hopeful that the person on the other end of these matches would know more about them than I did, so I reached out.

As it turns out, the genetic situation was far more convoluted for Dan than it was for me. He explained he had no more clue as to what was behind our peculiar match than I did, but that his real issue (and or mystery) was that he'd discovered his father had been switched as a baby at birth in Kansas way back in 1943. 

Now this was a mystery that the existential genealogist in me couldn't resist. 

Looking back, that was the first confluence of events in our lives that seemed to overlap - "Kansas" likely being the key word here. And from that starting point, it all began. You see, I was able to help him, and to figure out just who the "switcheree" was between babies Bobby and Dwayne back in '43. But that's a tale I'm sure you've already heard by now.

         

Moving past this genealogical case of the "Great Baby Switcheroo," and after studying his ancestral lines, I could see that he had a very evident ancestral line to Mayflower passenger John Howland. This was interesting to me as I'm also a Howland descendant. Mayflower ancestry being a non-too-private passion of mine, I offered to review Dan's lineage further, and retrieve what proofs I could find to see about securing him membership in The General Society. He agreed, and with mutual enthusiasm, we embarked on what turned out to be a successful months-long project.

In the meantime, and through it all, I began to see more and more of a confluence of our multiple shared ancestral kinships. Our "ancestors-in-common" kept racking up, and now total at last count about five. While I know that this isn't uncommon, it's still curious. I should mention, too, that the flow of information between us, indeed info about our present-day life in general, about our kids and our families, etc., has been good. It's been great. There's been a nice and mutual reciprocity in the exchange of ancestry and information. In a nutshell, it's been enjoyable getting to know the person on the other end of that DNA match.

I did have questions, of course. Questions about him that were not my business. The fact that even the briefest of Internet searches revealed him to be a Soap Opera star, a Reality TV celebrity, and that his face was on several prominent magazine covers was, well, if nothing else, also quite incredible. I admit, for a mutt like me, it was all at least a bit intriguing. And given the peculiar circumstances in his father's birth ("the baby swap of '43"), and me being able to help him resolve it didn't hurt either. Neither did figuring out his Mayflower line, nor coming to understand that he breeds and owns champion race horses. I mean, seriously, what the heck?       

Above: Image of the more handsome man has been placed on the left...obviously? LOL.

Say what?

Hell, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that on some very real level, I like to think we've sort of become friends? Yeah, I know that's a lot. It's kinda one of those "don't delude yourself, old man" things, right? Oh well, Beats me.

(Of course, I naturally distrust these sorts of things - the concept of "actual friendship" being nothing more than some mental construct made from the short-circuiting neurons of some internal dopamine drip.)

I could tell he traveled in circles different from mine. It seemed obvious, but still not my business to ask about. I guess I was naive too, though always curious why he never seemed to have to "go to work" even if very much successfully self-employed. (I hope that makes sense...) As a part of the general bourgeoisie myself, understanding privilege or a life of seemingly "protected leisure" (?) wasn't something I could easily identify. Indeed, not my business. Again, still, I was curious.

It was about the time I started to randomly look at Hester that it all started to make more sense. 

Yes, Hester. I guess I should introduce her at this point. Hester Schooley Record - my great-great-grandmother. As you might have guessed, by then, I had also discovered an additional mutual "ancestor in common" between Dan and me. The name of this ancestor is William Buckman (1649-1716), and a guy who directly leads to my great-grandmother, Hester. Yes, William Buckman, who arrived on the good ship Welcome with William Penn and a host of other Quakers - and a guy who also leads directly to Dan's great-great-grandfather, Harry Banks French. 

Now I'd seen the name of Harry Banks French before. I'd encountered the name largely through working the family pedigree and assembling the parts of the Mayflower line for my new connection through his mother. Honestly, since his French family line was sort of "off to the side" of John Howland, I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I somewhat ignored the fact that his grandparents, his mother's parents, were first cousins and the grandchildren of, you guessed it, Harry Banks French. I've done genealogy long enough to know that marriages between first cousins are pretty frickn' normal and a lot more common than anyone ever mentions them to be. It just is. Besides, pointing it out is, outside of a genealogical setting, extremely rude and ultimately gauche. 

I knew well enough, too, that his family was a bit more upper crust than what I was used to looking at, and certainly more so than what I was ever related to. I mean, you don't generally mention places like Bryn Mawr unless you move in the better end of Pennsylvania society. True, too, is that Dan's mention of "a church my family built" is also usually a sign that you move among a higher echelon than the rest of us do. 

However, then, as now, these things don't really matter. I mean, I liked the guy - my new genetic connection - and I'd have felt the same way if he had turned out to be a truck driver from Poughkeepsie. For me, though, what was curious, and what I couldn't help but pick away at, was our shared ancestry from William Buckman of Billinghurst, Sussex, England. It made the connection between our respective great-great-grandparents oddly closer. 

Cue the damn dumbass dopamine drip. (Okay, not really, it just sounds cool to say that...)

I guess it was about then that I started to take more notice of Harry Banks French, my great-great-grandmother's fifth cousin.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Fifth cousin? Really, Jeff?

It's hardly a close tie. 

The only defense I have here is that concerning all the other matches between my new genetic connection, Dan, and me, well, they were all so ancient and all so removed from me, or my immediate family, or yes, if you will, "the present day." They didn't feel as close (?) or relevant (?).  For me, though, my great-great-grandmother Hester Record is close. She is relevant. And she was recent enough. Hell, my father had sat on her lap as a baby. All of a sudden, our common ancestry to William Buckman, and Hester's shared cousinship to Harry Banks French, felt a little more contemporary.

It made a little more sense??? Yeah, I know...not.

Okay, relax, it isn't like either side of our families was going to get together for a barbecue any time soon, but it made me ask, so just who was this guy, this Harry Banks French?

                 

Above: Harry Banks French 1857-1925

Excited about the discovery of a new "ancestor-in-common,"  that is William Buckman of the ship Welcome and William Penn fame, and that cousins "Hester and Harry" were an unusual piece of the jigsaw puzzle we share in common, I messaged my new genetic connection and shared some of the following secondary source information:

  Dan's: 

  Me: 

Yep: Old Grandpa Bill off the Welcome - right there in both our trees.

Dan replied: (and believe me, I am paraphrasing here...)  "Yes, Harry Banks French was a remarkable man, and one that we are all very grateful for."     

Cryptic, but hey, what do you expect from Superman? Duh.

So what do I know? Not much.

I knew that Harry's father, Clayton French, had started a family pharmacy back in Pennsylvania. I knew that Harry had improved the pharmacy and that he'd made it more successful. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to the notes I read that referred to a circa 1880s drug store business merger that became known as "Smith, Kline, and French." I mean it was familiar sounding enough to me, but again, who or whatever they were didn't mean a lot in terms of genealogy - but then I took another look at "Smith, Kline, and French."          

Yes, and there it was in 1952 dollars. This didn't account for subsequent, or rather evident, business sales/mergers. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense.

Now I'm pretty much gonna stop here. I began to see that "Smith, Kline, and French" (a company that lasted for years) became one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. And while the "French" was dropped from the name sometime in the 1970s-1980s, and SmithKline purchased Beecham and was again morphed into "GlaxoSmithKline" and is now owned by a British conglomerate called Haleon that is involved in joint ventures with Pfizer...Well, you can see where I am going with all of this. 

It's a company that makes or has brought you A LOT OF THINGS, from Thorazine to Brylcreem - and probably a few Covid vaccines to boot.           

 Harry Banks French kinda started it all.

Yeah, that explains one hell of a lot about my new friend, cousin, and genetic connection - Dan. It explains why this soap opera star, reality TV celebrity, race horse breeder, magazine cover guy, and generally good dude just donated a rather sizeable sum to the Mayflower Society.

To the GSMD? Just because? They'd better not take advantage of him, or they will answer to me.

So I guess I am kind of a dumbass. Should I have listened better to the ghost of Grandma Hester? Did she try to tell me about the French Connection or warn me about falling victim to another drug, one called the fallacy of believing in friendship that comes from "kinship?"

Maybe I just couldn't hear her. 

Anyway... Dan's a frickin' rockstar Superman dude - and best of all, he's also incredibly a bit of a genealogical geek. (That's the best part) All Brylcreem, lozenges, vaccines, and other pharmaceuticals aside - This particular Mayflower Descendant is a genuinely good guy, and he's actually kin? WTF?

Yeah, I know, Jeff. Whatever.

I just hope I'm not self-sabotaging myself into believing in another Shirley Temple Black moment. (Been there, done that - those of you who know me will know what I mean) You see, once people get what they need or want from you, they generally move on. It's the natural order of things to get tossed out like organic waste. 

You know, like DNA. (Lol)

But hey, we all know I got da issues. 

Life. Go figure.

☮