AFTER ALL: COMMONALITY

AFTER ALL: COMMONALITY

Friday, January 04, 2019

  Several of my cousins have done considerable research and compilation of family history. Their efforts were not limited to paper chases for at times it was physical location of well kept or weedy cemeteries and probing therein. I greatly appreciate their investment of time, energy, and willingness to share. Reading over the anthology is interesting.

  I learned:

·         Through the centuries our Heinz 57 developed.

·         Surnames were often changed or spelled differently, sometimes seemingly for no other reason than whim.

·         In ye olde days apprentices, and sometimes journeymen, weren’t allow to marry until they qualified as a master. This often resulted in their children at their wedding.

·         There were otherwise lusty lads and lassies that produced illegitimate children, a family writer deeming one female “the little girl that couldn’t say no.” resulting in 5 illegitimate children, with at number 3 the local villagers forming an unsuccessful mob, but with the pastor writing a definite letter of condemnation. And then on June 20, 1807, Anna married Peter.

·         One relation lived his life as an Orangeman in a Catholic family. It’s rumored he was helped out of Ireland by the Constabulary, though more likely it was An Gorta Mor, the potato famine.

·         Some had very large families. Adult and child mortality commoner than now.

·         Several lived on the poor side. Most lived average. A few had wealth and education.

·         Some married couples with children lived with relatives. A few all or most of their life.

·         Some loved a good joke, even to perpetrating a family myth based in a bit of truth.

·         During the great European plague one large branch of family mysteriously survived untouched.

·         They had quite a variety of individual occupations, but at times grouped as cowherders, shepherds, keepers of forest, carpenters of buildings and ships, railroaders, plumbers, fitters, compounders et al.

  A diverse family history it is. But there is a commonality: As eventually shall also we -- they kept their unavoidable Hebrews 9:27 prior arrangement. 

EBB4