The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Roots

Occasionally, I get obsessed with things. Sometimes it's men, or food, or reading trashy celebrity blogs, but it's what makes me 'me', and I've accepted it. I don't know if it's a character flaw or a quirk that I am easily influenced by things I find attractive, but the feeling I get from it, the rush of importance mixed with purpose, is beat by nothing.

For the last week, I've been obsessed with geneaology. My interest in the past has always been strong, but now it's coming back to life. M. bought me a family tree program for my computer, and from the moment I activated it, I've been a recluse, a mad genetic explorer. I have abandoned all other interests (poetry, journalling, self-loathing, chocolate...) in favour of sitting rigid in a chair, scrutinizing tiny print and connecting dots. I was delighted in finding a third cousin named Diana who had started a family tree for my grandmother's side of the family, and she happily gave me access to it with all 703 people on the branches. I was able to trace back my great-grandfather's family to the mid-1200's in England, and I found myself exhausted by the immensity of it. So many years, generations, names and deaths. Also, people were not as creative with names back in the day, with parents often naming their children after themselves, which made for some confusion while analyzing census forms and birth certificates. This was compounded by the huge number of infant deaths, often with the dead child's name being past to a successor who would be born after. In one family there were four boys named John. I will never name a child John should I ever be pregnant again. There are far too many in the world. That goes for Elizabeth and Thomas, too. I think I'm up to about twelve of those in just one side of the family, and infant that I sometimes am, I giggled and snorted to myself about the number John Thomas' that came up (pun intended). Thank goodness for the Maudes (only one so far) and the Constances (one, not including my grandmother's middle name), otherwise I'd be stuck at the beginning, spinning in circles.

I've been updating my parents regularly on my discoveries: unspoken stillborn babies, swift marriages, children being shipped over to North America to work, war heroes who never mentioned that they'd actually seen a war. I am also enjoying disproving a lot of my mother's tales which have been filtering down through the years. Her mother, my grandmother, wasn't one for giving details and she kept a lot of things to herself. What she didn't have a problem talking about, she was hazy on the details for. She had been the youngest in a family of ten, born twenty-three years after her eldest sister, and she was never very close to her siblings as a result. She spoke of her father with affection but never talked about his death, nor did she go into much detail about her mother who ended up in a sanitorium, which was where the old and infirm used to be sent to die. Maybe it was too painful to talk about, or maybe I just didn't ask her the questions, but I do remember showing her pictures of people in turn of the century garb, washed in a sepia tone, and asking who they were, to which she'd respond 'Oh, I can't remember dear. That was a long time ago.'

Admittedly, I've always been more interested in my dad's family. I identify with my Irishness moreso than my Englishness, and let's face it, when you've been raised by someone as rabid as my father when it comes to the English invasion, subsequent oppression and genocide, you tend to find nearly everything about the blue-blooded ones a little off-putting. That said, it has been much easier to find information about my mother's lineage, as many Irish records were burned during the Four Courts fire of 1922. It's fascinating stuff, really.

My family on both sides are relatively new to North America. All of my great-grandparents were born in Europe, which makes it a little hard to figure out who came here and when. I have been scouring through Irish and English census records and military records trying to find out who I am, genetically speaking, and I'm learning. Slowly.

My great-grandfather and great-grandmother were born and raised in Staffordshire, England. Their families, as it turns out, lived there from the beginning of the tree, from medieval times on. Generation after generations born, raised and died in the same place, and I find that intriguing. I have heard of Staffordshire pottery, sure, but until I read the census records and family history I did not know that my family were responsible for creating it. All of them painted it, sculpted it, fired it. My great-grandparents even met while working on it. I was stunned by this, given that I have never owned a single piece of the stuff and don't think my mother does either. I had begun to dismiss the 'Wedgwood' rumours of lineage until I found that my great-grandfather's mother was one, and that her entire family were, in fact, Wedgwood china. Now, I do have two pieces of that in my living room, but they're M's, so I can't claim true ownership there. I suddenly have the urge to take a pottery class.

Also, Charles Darwin is my third cousin, 5X removed. I'm not sure how close that actually is, but I'll take it. I suspect he would take issue with some of my beliefs, but I'm not going to debate evolution. I tend to like a blend of science mixed with mysticism. It's magic and logic in a tidy package.

There are weak strings of connection through my great-grandfather to Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Jane Austen, George Orwell, Elizabeth Browning, Clement Moore (The Night Before Christmas) and Henry David Thoreau. All distant cousins, but it's still kind of exciting. Of course, when you go back far enough, we're all related, anyway. Still, it's incredibly cool to make the associations, and my great-grandfather was also related (again, distantly) to Audrey Hepburn, which is probably one of my favourite discoveries.

Now, I just have to get into my dad's side more, but that could be difficult. They were all secretive people, dodging the mainstream, huddled in corners, whispering with purpose. The challenge is intriguing.