The Devil's branches 

(Author's note: Occasionally, family history needs to be nothing more than a footnote in history. Sometimes, though, it can be so much more.)

As always, my blog posts are murderously unedited.

I will try to be brief. (lol.)

Not everything is pretty. As much as I'd like to tell you that we're all are only related to Revolutionary War patriots, English kings, and a few Hollywood movie stars scattered about the incredible but very ordinary lives of our near and distant kin, I can't. 

None of us are. 

As much as we don't like to admit it, there are the Devil's branches among our family trees. It's weird, too; it feels embarrassing. It's unsettling to learn that your fifth cousin twice removed was some serial killer that would have given Ted Bundy a run for his money, or that unbeknownst to you, your family stood in line with the family of the folks who took care of John Wilkes Booth after he killed President Lincoln, or that you share a Mayflower ancestor with Alex Murdaugh. I mean, Eeewww right? 

It makes you wonder how you could be related to so much evil when you gotta believe that one of the only evil things you ever did was to drive too fast, or cut somebody off while speeding down the 405 while late for work after saying some not-so-great things to your wife. Or maybe it was cuz of that stretch on the truth on those 1994 taxes???

Just saying...

Hey, we've all been close to that edge.

Yeah, I'm not trying to (once again) oversimplify anything. Truly. I guess we all have a wee bit of the devil in us, and we all certainly have some of the Devil's branches in our family tree. I don't think we should celebrate this, but maybe we can, like anything else, somehow learn from it (?). However, like I said before, some of it sure ain't pretty.

Anyway, this is my "long-winded attempt at being brief" and my way of saying I found something in my friend Paige's tree that ain't the prettiest. Eh, well, it's not a serial killer (at least not this time), but if you're an old duffer like me, it might take you back to a certain grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.

Yeah, that grassy knoll.  Cue the motorcade. Cue that pink pill box hat.

                         

I guess there's no sense in sugar coating it. Paige, you are a cousin of Lee Harvey Oswald through your mom's Carter side. Yeah, there's not much mistaking it. I haven't figured out "the degree" much. My rough eyeball estimate thinks you're about a seventh cousin, probably about twice removed to the old very troubled Mr. Oswald. ( I double checked - it's "a seventh cousin three times removed")

                           

Yeah, I know, it ain't all that much fun learning that on some celestial level you and old Lee Harvey can hang out at the family barbecues together, or that I'm holding out on telling you about that famous serial killer in your family tree. (Well, it is sort of a biggie...) The only thing I can say is don't get too bummed out about having someone like old Lee Harvey in the tree. Most of the time, we only feel kind of a remote connection to major historical events, you know, like any connection to them is for other people to have and not us. I guess when I learn something like this, i.e., like your connection to Oswald, I just "enjoy" the idea that my life is connected to the greater experience of American History. 

Doesn't mean you handed Old Cousin Lee Harvey the gun, or that you endorse what he did. Just means that somewhere along the way, your cousin, Lee Harvey Oswald, got lost among the Devil's branches of your family tree. 

The only thing I try to remember here is that, as "cool" (poor word choice) as it is to find a genetic or ancestral connection to a major criminal, assassin, or horrendous event like this - is that there's so much good in our family trees that these few twisted branches can't take that away. We don't celebrate them. However, we do remember them, and pass on their stories to those we love as to why we can't live like they did, and hey, why we all gotta do better.

Now I haven't included a lot of source material in this post. In the last blog post, I mapped you out to Diana (Skipwith) Dale and Thomas Carter, and well, old Lee Harvey's ancestry connects back to them, and is very well known.

Well, I guess this old man better get off his grassy knoll soap box. Time to give my readers (if there are any) a break. Besides, we can't all have some fancy ancestral ass ghost haunting a possible pirate's treasure on an island off the coast of Maine. lol. 

That's way more than old Lee Harvey's got. Wink!

Go forth and enjoy the sunshine of the good things in your life. 

☮️