Now, what was I saying?
To make matters worse, you won't even find the beginning (or would that be the end?) of the story on this blog, because I started it over at www.emptynestfullheart.com and have yet to figure out how to move it over here. So, rather than make this even more confusing than it has to be (which seems to be a specialty of mine), I'm going to back up a few more days and tell you another story.
This one takes place on New Year's Eve and involves no alcohol, no partying, and not even any watching the ball drop at Time Square. So what kind of a New Year's Eve is that? Our kind. We are somewhat boring people and feel that if there were some sort of contest we just might win it. But we'd probably only enter if the prize was a trip to somewhere warm (with palm trees) during the frigid Wisconsin winter. Where was I? Oh, yes...New Year's Eve.
We had been watching some NCIS reruns on television - I believe they were having a Tony Dinozzo marathon, when Flyboy decided he couldn't handle any more excitement, and opted to head to bed. Being a true multi-tasker at heart, I had been dinking around on my laptop while we were watching Tony and McGee and Abby and Officer David and Jethro and Ducky, which is my normal routine. I think it assuages some sort of guilt stemming from the notion that watching TV simply for the sake of watching TV is nothing but a waste of time. Doing something *constructive* like simultaneously surfing the web makes me feel better. So, having just the day before met with a most interesting lady about what it takes to join the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), I was looking at their website when Flyboy announced he was calling it a night. "Right behind you," I said.
I was getting ready to sign off, but then, right there in the library section of the DAR website, I found it.
I found the ancestor search database. And the descendant search database. I knew about my patriot ancestor - Ebenezer Bartlett, who had fought in the Revolutionary War - but after meeting my new friend from the local chapter of the DAR, and seeing that she had SEVEN patriot ancestors, I had a thought. Doesn't it make sense that if you have one patriot ancestor, chances are you might have more? There are many people in my line who were here in the 1700s and before, so I decided to start typing names into the ancestor search database.
You won't believe what I found.
I don't even believe what I found.
When a woman joins the DAR, she must provide evidence of her lineage all the way back to the patriot ancestor. The first couple of generations are not that hard to document. We live in a country and in a time where good record keeping is the norm. We can order copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates. We can locate records proving land ownership. But the farther back you go, the harder it gets. People were often born at home. Records were lost in fires, or were not stored in manners conducive to preservation. The beauty of the ancestor database is that if a DAR member has already proven lineage in the past, their verified research can be used if you come from the same line. I found that Ebenezer's son James, and James' son Ebenezer had already been documented by someone else, so I won't have to prove those links. Score!
Then, feeling lucky, I decided to check on some of my other ancestors and try to determine if any of them had been documented here.
You won't believe what I found.
I don't even believe what I found.
Are you sitting down? I found 14 - yes, you read that right - FOURTEEN patriot ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. I was riveted to my keyboard, racing through page after page, finding person after person - and detailed information about where they served, with which company, and so forth.
Before I knew it, it was 2:00 a.m. Not normally being a night owl, I was in a state of disbelief all the way around when I glanced at my watch and realized I never made it to bed. But I was wide awake and electrified with energy as I clicked and read.
Then I had an idea. My DAR friend replied to my comment that we had family that had been here since before the 1700s with this: "If you have family that far back, someone was most likely on the Mayflower." Remembering that I have had this one little nagging doubt regarding one family line that could lead to the Mayflower (Rachel Butterfield - Jonas Butterfield - Timothy Butterfield), I decided to look them up on the descendant database to see if any research had been done on this line. My problem in this line has been that there were more than one Rachel and Jonas Butterfield, born around the same time and in nearby proximity to one another. Finding THE Jonas who was THE son of THE Timothy and THE father of THE Rachel has been alluding me for some time. If my Rachel really was the granddaughter of Timothy, then a connection going back from there to the Mayflower could be claimed.
You're not going to believe this.
I still struggle to believe it.
But right there on the DAR database was the link I have been looking for - my Rachel really is the granddaughter of Timothy, whose line leads back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Mayflower.
Unbelievable.
I was giddy, and it took all I had to not run into the bedroom and shake Flyboy awake to share the news. And once I finally did silently sneak into bed, I thought I'd never get to sleep. About the time I was about to drive myself crazy counting backwards from one million, I finally fell asleep.
And then the phone rang. At about 5:15 a.m. With news. It's interesting that calls at 5:15 are usually connected with the beginning of life or the end of life. This time, is was the end. Flyboy's sister had passed. Mercifully, she was able to celebrate one last Christmas with her family and had actually rallied a bit that day. We shed some tears and tried to get a little more sleep. The report of my findings would have to wait a little longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment