A Family Tree

A fork in the road

A)   B)  C) or None of the Above

A family Tree

Choices all but I think I will go with the tree…my Family Tree.

Too, too many greats back so let’s just refer to her as Grannyancestor and I’ll call her Molly. There she is, brown-eyed, almost tiny, four and half feet tall, but wiry, strong, securely upright, sure footed as she runs through the high rough savannah grasses with her cousin Lucy.  She turns to look back at the trees and for a moment remembers when her people lived in them and swung freely from branches.  What fun that must have been! Her tiny fists curl in memory but soon she spots an interesting looking stone nearby, sharp-edged that might be good for digging roots. This is a new idea! Stooping to pick it up she is suddenly swept by an urge and turns again and looks forward.

She cannot possibly understand what she sees there in the future but she is intriguied, curious, and makes the decision that will in eons of time lead to ME.  Choice after choice, “Oh, he looks strong and brave, let’s go with him,” or “God, he’s pushy, dragging me by my hair into his cave, but, you know I bet he’ll make strong babies!”

And so it goes, on through  that long, difficult trek out of Africa, rounding the Mediteranean Sea, up through northern Europe ,becoming Celtic, eventually seasick in a frail boat Molly’s  Mollys sail the channel coming  home to what will be named far into the future, The British Isles. She’s taller now, she loves the words that form a language known and spoken by many, she understands a wider world beyond what she can see, she learns to read to write and communicate with others far from her small place in the scheme of things. But she is still brown-eyed and still making one good choice after another, picking not only what pleases her but which will lead unbroken to She/Me.

And now we have writing and records so I see for the first time the one of Molly’s sons that becomes my Grandpancester, William Clerich, fifth Chief of the Scottish Clan, MacLeod born in 1432.  There’s actually a book which shows the choices down the years leading to a last, so far, paragraph listing me and my children! 

Here’s an offshoot, one of many branches, that tells of Molly’s son, Richard Floyd of Wales, sailing to America (we are really getting around!), who boasts of his son William who is the thirty second signer of the Declaration of Independence from New York.

His daughter Catherine was wooed by James Madison who followed her on horseback halfway from Philadelphia to New York pleading for her hand.  Just thin if she had said ‘yes’ I would have the 5th  president of the United States in my family tree. But she spurned him in favor of a little known reverend, William Clarkson.  Poor choice, perhaps, but then I would not be Me would I?

Here’s another, Rutgers Clarkson, with his connection to Rutgers College. 

All  lovely people I’m sure but we begin to peter out some becoming more ordinary everyman/woman into the present but still carrying the genes, excitement, the courage the strength and the brown eyes of our own intrepid Molly. We’ve all been pretty much Anglo-Saxon, Scottish, Irish and Welsh, with just a minor infusion of Dutch and maybe a soupcon of French.  Decision time again, it’s up to me now to choose the next fork, the next branch of the tree to explore.  And I do.

We are all richer now, I have chosen an ancient proud, renaissance heritage that, along with green eyes  and great mathematical ability will send Molly forward again, brave and curious, as always into the future.  I have married an Italian!