Family oral history tells me my father’s side of the family used to have money and influence, but were already on the decline by the time of the Revolution against the Spanish Crown at the time of the Revolutionary wars (the last half of the 19th century). Supposedly, I have a great-grandfather who was a poet and landowner who freed his slaves to fight against the Spaniards, and who died of a fever while campaigning, while his twin brother remained loyal to the Crown; but the source of this family legend is suspect; a drama queen aunt who is still expecting to collect an inheritance from that era. On my mother’s side, my grandfather had some education, but little else is known about his side of the family, except his father was from Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second city.

My mother’s mother was of “Islander” stock, that is, my ancestors on that side of the family left Spain for the Canary Islands (probably in the 1600s), and then emigrated again to Cuba (probably two hundred years later), then again to North America. But nobody really knows for sure.

The only thing I am certain of is that all four of my grandparents were born in Cuba but came to the US in their 20s, and my parents were born in the US, in 1911 and 1920.

Although I must admit it would be neat to know more about my family history, I don’t think it really makes much difference. We can neither take blame or credit for what our ancestors did or who they were. We had nothing to do with it. It really doesn’t matter.

But perhaps family history had some effect on me, at least through natural selection. My grandparents left Cuba, and their ancestors left Spain. So I am descended from a pretty rootless bunch of wanderers. The only other clue is from physical appearance. Most of my relatives on both sides of the family are fair skinned, curly haired brunettes. Only my maternal grandfather is olive-skinned with jet-black straight hair and I have inherited both. He also has an Indian (or Arab, or Jewish) nose, which I have also inherited from him.

The DNA has little to do with the proving the links. All it does is establish kinship with other families in the USA and the ROW and sets a haplo-group that tells you where your people settled as they moved out of Africa to where we are today. In my case from Scandinavia to UK and Ireland.

The UK father of our John has never been proven conclusively and the guesswork that leads us back to our Royals is just educated guesswork done by family association genealogists. They are willing to commit on his father but the real genealogists don’t get seriously involved in the “probable” links that takes it back to guys like Charlemagne.

Learning about my mothers side has been a more reasonable (but frustrating) challenge. I can only prove links back to my 2nd ggf Abraham Leverett b. 1827. We can’t prove a father for him and so the guesswork comes early. There is a real possibility of finding and proving his father sooner or later but the certainty that exists for the Chandlers is rare and it usually get very murky and hard to prove after 6-7 generations. I have 6 family branches that I look at and spend some time on, but they all are stuck in the late 18th to early 19th century.

It can be fascinating, especially for an ocd bean counter like me.

Traveling from Europe, I can also claim Bradley, aboard the Mayflower, as well as being a distant cousin to Rebecca Rolfe, AKA Pocahontas, and a direct descendant of Revolutionary War hero Gen. Anthony Wayne, the mad one, remembered through Fort Wayne, IN, and Wayne County, OH. …But that’s enough about me.

Dig. Your ancestry could prove a fascinating personal journey.