Genealogy and Me: To Begin At the Beginning

For a few years now, since materials have become so widely available on the internet, I've been doing genealogical research. For decades, whenever my mother and her sisters would get together, eventually they would sit down at the dining room table with cups of coffee and discuss their family history. Their mother, my grandmother, was one of 17 children, 13 of whom grew up and had children of their own -- so there was a lot of family to keep track of on that side alone.

But, frankly, listening to these discussions for all those years, they seemed like a pretty normal midwestern family. Maggie McGillivray, my grandmother, was the daughter of a Scottish immigrant, Hugh McGillivray,  and his wife, Jane Irvine, who was born in Canada of a Scottish mother and and Irish father. They moved from Canada to North Dakota, and then Minnesota, when good farmland became available for homesteading and supplies and other perks were provided to qualifying homesteaders. Many families in the area had basically the same story, whether they came from Scotland, Germany, or Finland.

My grandfather's family had roots in old New England; his parents moved from Massachusetts to Minnesota for pretty much the same reasons. Or so everyone thought. My grandfather's background  wasn't usually the subject of these discussions, and I think this is because of the sad fact that his mother died when he was 13, and never really talked about her family with him. And that's too bad, because there were certainly a lot of surprises for me when I began my research, and I'm sure he would have liked to know what I found out.

The first big surprise was discovering our Mayflower ancestor. Yes! I know my mom would have loved to know that -- not out of snootiness (which would be pretty silly, since our ancestor was an indentured servant), but out of love of history. (As a family, we all enjoyed trips to historical sites and reconstructions; I think I was 12 years old when we went to Williamsburg.)

Our family's first arrival in America was John Howland, who was born in England, and sailed for the New World on the Mayflower in 1620, at the age of 19. He was a servant to one of the other passengers, John Carver. But my favorite fact about him is this: he was the one who fell overboard! Apparently he sank quite deep underwater but was able to grasp a line thrown to him and so was rescued. He later married Elizabeth Tilley, another passenger whose entire family died of various illnesses in the colony, and they had 10 children -- and probably tens of thousands of descendants.

But how precarious our lives are! What if he hadn't been able to reach the lifeline? What if he, too, had succumbed to cholera, or whatever it was that swept the colony? A lot of us wouldn't be here today.