The hard parts of genealogy

[flea]

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.

Comments

[veejane]

D. has told you surely about the Smith about 5 generations back who did that side of the family's tree back to the Revolution (in order to join the Sons of Whoseywatsis, of course)? He was an immigrant to Maryland, having grown up in the 1870s-80s in Brazil, where his parents were missionaries. Why had his parents gone missionary, and why there?

Because they'd been Marylanders who couldn't bear the idea of Maryland without slavery. They hadn't even owned any slaves that I know of, but they emigrated all the same. To the last country in this hemisphere to disallow chattel slavery (1888). I kinda like how history bit them in the ass: no, you will not find a place on this earth that's going to stay okay with slavery forever.

(I think Smith the Younger above was the grandfather of Billy and Porter; I'm not sure, though. I remember the story, though!)