Up a Tree

We looked at William Graham and the Graham family in Scotland a bit last time. The Graham clan in Scotland, in the Family Search genealogy, reaches back to the 10th century before we run out of relatives. I can do a good deal of exploring along the branches of that part of the tree, but on a quick inspection, I found at least two connections to the First War of Scottish Independence. If that doesn't ring a bell for you, this is the period covered in a little movie called Braveheart , starring a still-liked actor named Mel Gibson. He played William Wallace. One connection to Wallace is through a great-to-the-x uncle of William Graham who was considered to be one of Wallace's close confidants. John de Graham, who once rescued Wallace during the conflict. If you wondered, he doesn't appear as a character in the movie.  The other connection that appears is a fella by the name of Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland, who also appears in the movie, though not always in a favorable ...

I'm sure you're familiar with interjection that forms the title to this post, especially if you've seen or are a fan of the Back to the Future  movies, because it's a favorite exclamation of one of the principle characters, Dr. Emmett Brown.  As best as I can tell from a few minutes of Internet research, the phrase as we know it first shows up in the 1800s and appears to be linked to General Winfield Scott, commander of American forces in the War with Mexico and briefly one of the generals appointed to lead Union forces during the Civil War -- until President Lincoln decided he wasn't up to the job. So what has that to do with the title? You remember my saying that my wife, who was born a Reagan, wondered whether she was related to John H. Reagan, for whom Reagan County in Texas is named. When I looked him up and established the relationship -- he married one of Sharon's relatives -- I was given a brief genealogy listing that showed how he got into the tree. The...

Over the years I've heard people discussing relations with cousins using a set of numbers, but I never understood what it was about, and I didn't care to find out. I'm sure lots of people actually know the system and would laugh at my ignorance, and that's OK. but I have talked to people who don't understand it either. Turns out it's  pretty simple, but the implications fascinate me. To start, people who share the same grandparents are first cousins. You know that. The somewhat confusing part is that more than likely, your cousins from your dad's side are different from those on your mum's side. My dad had no siblings, so I have no cousins from that side. Mother's parents had three children, and her brothers had a total of five kids. They are all my first cousins.  The cousin numbering follows from that. Me and my cousins are in the same generation, the first generation after our grandparents to qualify as cousins, hence first cousins.  My kids and m...

With a name like Reagan, relatives in Sharon's part of the family wonder if they are related to any famous Reagans. Sharon specifically asked me last week if her family was related to the Reagan for whom Reagan County in Texas is named for. Other family members wondered if they are related to a certain famous former actor who once occupied the White House. I fiddled around with some of the features of Family Search, the online resource from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to see if I could find answers. And I did.  First, you need to know that Reagan County lies southeast of the Midland-Odessa area and west southwest of San Angelo, which puts it in between I-20 and I-10. You also need to know, if you're not from Texas or you flunked Texas geography, that it could charitably be said to be in the middle of nowhere. If you're from that area, I apologize, but I grew up in Midland, which is close to the middle of nowhere.  Reagan County has one incorporated town...

Before I return to the story of the Hurt family, one of whose descendants married into the Reagan family, I want to share a link to a YouTube video concerning Pocahontas. The producers provide some background to Pocahontas' story and then attempt to show what her appearance might actually look like if you saw her in life, based on the picture that accompanied last week's post. You can find it here:  The True Face of Pocahontas?   Now back to the Hurts, none of whom would have ever known Pocahontas, as they came to Virginia after her death.  Stephen Hamlin (also spelled Hamelin or Hamlyn) brought the Hurt family to Virginia as part of a group of 25 immigrants. Hamlin and his brothers had come to Massachusetts about 15 years before, with one brother settling in Boston and the other going to Mexico. Steven obtained a land patent in Virginia two years later.  To obtain a patent a colonist generally had to provide some sort of service to a government official, such as a r...

We learned about the Pamunkey tribe in the last post and how they obtained treaties with the English that were designed to protect them, their homelands and their way of life while amicably providing the English land on which they could settle. This would eventually end in the settlers deciding the tribe didn't really have the rights they thought they had allowing the settlers to take land away from the tribe and give it to members of the English community, which included one of Sharon's ancestors. Given this plain description, you might get the idea that the English dealt rather faithlessly with the Pamunkeys, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong. But we have to remember that the Europeans and Native Americans held differing views on land ownership. To the Pamunkey and the other tribes of Virginia at the time, the land they claimed belonged to the group, not the individual. Heads of families were granted the use of a plot of land by the chief and the tribal council. They had...

Time to switch back to the Reagan side of the family tree, though the connection will still be to Colonial America.  I want to emphasize that I am not claiming in any of these posts that either side of the family was part of the original communities we learn about in secondary school history classes -- Jamestown, Plymouth, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. No, the various American colonies were pretty well established by the time our family's folks started to showing up.  I'd also point out that when we think about the early days of colonization, I know that I tend to think almost exclusively in terms of the English colonies. I'm apt to forget that other nations had quite a head start on establishing outposts in what would come to be the United States, most notably Spain. And of course, we shouldn't forget that pretty much everywhere Europeans dropped in, even as far back as the Norsemen, aka Vikings, people already lived here. Which leads us into today's tale. I had tr...