The hard parts of genealogy

While one knows, intellectually, that one's Puritan ancestors were involved both directly and indirectly in nasty relations with the native peoples of New England, and that anyone living on the frontier in Pennsylvania and going on military missions to Detroit probably also involved unsavory dealings, there's nothing like coming up against slave-owning ancestors to give a nice white liberal Yankee girl pause. Yet here we are: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Nathaniel_Irish_%283%29 (This link is fascinating in its own right, with transcriptions of original documents and good citations to the historical record, and Nathaniel Irish, who was my, lemme see, 9-generations-back direct ancestor, certainly lived an interesting life. And left a fellow human being to his daughter in his will.)

It would be nice to go back to the yeoman farmer-schoolteachers of New Hampshire, but on I must press.