Genealogy as Time Travel

My pal Michal (AKA The Balm of Idaho) was recently musing about family history -- where do we come from, who came before us and such.

I think genealogy is interesting and I like to read the family trees, researched over the years by some of my relatives. Maybe someday I’ll delve into it myself -- I’m curious about my maternal grandfather’s side.   

It starts with people you know, and then you go back to people you’ve heard your Mother or Father talk about and then there are the names of people you’ve seen in old pictures with their names underneath.   

My granddaughter asked me for the history of my Mother’s family so she could join the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). I found it. Our “Patriot” relative was Abraham France, born in 1739, hailing from Lorraine, France.   Then my daughter found  a web site that not only listed him, but a paragraph or two about him -- when he came to America with his brothers, what regiment he fought with in the Revolutionary War, his wife’s and children’s names all with the dashes . 

 Then I noticed the web site had HIS father listed and his Grandfather and his Great-Great Grandfather… all the way back to 1596.  One Johann Jacob Frantz (1596-1671) born and lived in Alsace France. So it got me to thinking about how my forebears really lived. Somehow I’m connected to the time of Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, King Louis XII and Louis XIV of France. 

My granddaughter has her degree in French and Loves France. Lately I feel I’ve been time-traveling to those times

…. maybe it’s just all in our genes…..

Fueling my own family history curiosity are my cousins Gary and Albert. They both recently shared a pic of our Aunt Mamie -- my mother’s mother’s sister. Mamie, originally Domenichella, was a favorite -- wonderfully warm, a fab cook and always happy. I realize only now that she was more of a grandmother to me -- she took care of/watched over my mother/her niece, after Lucia's mother, Angelina, died (of Nf2 -- the Gabrielle curse).

Mia madre Lucia in 1956

The three Gabrielle sisters, Domenichella, Angelina and Marie, came to the US in 1920 from Gioia del Colle, a town in the province of Bari, Apulia, Italy.

The image, at left, is from when she was Sister Rose. I don’t know what order she was with or where. I don’t really know for certain why she left the convent or how she ended up with Uncle John -- an irascible old fuck. The two never missed a chance to engage in verbal fisticuffs, generally at tall volumes and always in Italian.

Research is clearly in my immediate future.

You know, all this makes me wonder what future generations might say about me.   

‘Did you know? Great-great Aunt Donna worked in the print industry back when film was still shot and there were strippers! No, not that kind of stripper. She made loads of paintings of naked people too!’

I guess snickering descendents are inevitable.