Yeomen Featherstones

Slowly I'm getting back into the groove. This obsession won't ever let me completely quit.
I began researching more on the Featherstones since visiting the castle and town. Looking on Ancestry.com, I was able to trace the line back to 1428 in Warwickshire, England. The thing is, Warwickshire is not very close to Featherstone. Featherstone is farther north near the Scottish border. Warwickshire is south near Stratford-on-Avon.( It's kind of exciting to think that my ancestors may have known Shakespeare.) The Featherstones were yeomen. If I understand the title, yeomans were medieval middle class. The Featherstones of the castle were noblemen. They were first mentioned in the 13th century. Sounds like I have some more researching to do.

Visiting the area does make it feel more real. Maybe next time I will visit some of the genealogical sources and libraries.

Brick walls

I finally watched Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" yesterday. I had seen snippets before and was already in awe of the late professor. Now I am inspired to come out of my lethargy and achieve my dreams.

I only had one childhood dream--to be an author. I wrote my first play when I was nine. It was an Easter play that they put on in my 4th grade class. I can't remember if it was any good just that I did it. I started a novel when I was 11. I remember the title--"The Devil and the Joneses." I never finished it. I use to create family newspapers during that time complete with a comic strip. Since that time I have written professionally off and on and finally self-published my family history. But I feel that I have stop short of actually reaching that dream.

Now I have another dream, a grown-up one. I want to go as far back as I can go on as many lines of my ancestors as I can and to chronicle it so that my family and other interested people can profit from my research.

And I can't let the brick walls stop me. Pausch said in the video, "Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something." To me that also means that brick walls are not insurmountable. They can be conquered. It may take years. It may take someone else taking up the gauntlet. But they must be scaled, torn down or whatever to get to the information.

So these are my goals--to become an author and to tear down those brick walls.

Long time

I smashed some of my New Year's resolutions into tiny pieces. I'm talking about the one where I post more. In the past few months, I became very paranoid and also a little self-deprecating. You know, that "vanity, vanity, all is vanity" kind of thinking. That plus work and brick walls sapped my enthusiasm about blogging.

I'm not saying I'm ready to blog every day again. I'm still a little suspicious of how little privacy we have on the internet and how much we give away for free. But I am facing the reality of life in the millennium. And if you can't beat them, rejoin them.

So I'm kind of back. And I'm literally back. I did keep that resolution about visiting the ancestral castle in Featherstone. The sight of the castle as it came into view was magical. I could imagine the horses galloping down the road to the castle, over hills and dales, real ones, past a running brook full of stones. It was one of the highlights of my trip.

Unfortunately I was not able to get inside. The castle is privately owned. I knocked several times on the door but no one answered. I was too shy to venture further. Alas, I found out the next day that a friend of the owner was at my B & B and could have gotten me an invitation. Must not have been meant to be. I did get several photos, some of which I will enlarge for art and the rest will be in my book. I didn't see the side of the castle shown in an earlier blog. I didn't want to trespass more than I did.

Is it Spring yet?

I took an unplanned hiatus from research. Teaching is using up all my gray matter and leaves very few discretionary brain cells for other pursuits. That is my reason not my excuse. On a higher note, I am working at my 2010 resolutions. It's kind of a good news/bad news deal, though. Good news: I finished formatting my last edition of "Say My Name." Bad news: my computer froze and when it unfroze, all my stuff was gone. Did you hear me screaming for 30 minutes? That's when it happened.

Yes, I have a copy of the book saved to an external hard drive. I also have a hard copy. But it's a lot of work to format it and tweak it and I don't have the energy to do it again. At least, not until the summer.

About my other resolution, I have booked my trip to England. I will see the ancestral castle in Featherstone. It took me weeks to click the button to book but I womanned up and finally did it. I will leave as soon as my last class ends. On my own. Aren't I brave?

Family Secrets

My grandmother Posie told my aunt Carolyn that there were some things she was taking with her to the grave. And there goes a treasure full of information or does it?

One of my arguments about full disclosure is that while the interested parties may be sheltered from the truth, uninterested parties are walking around talking about other people's business. So the family is actually being an ostrich with its head in the sand while everybody else sees the butt.

This became my argument because of another family scandal I became privy to. This scandal happened decades and decades ago and the people are only names to me. It was a matter of incest (most secrets seem to be of a sexual nature since criminal acts are usually in the public domain). I was told about it over 10 years ago by a distant cousin. The thing is, she was told by an elderly lady in a nursing home. This elderly lady relished reporting the juicy details to her. So how many times had the lady told this story? How many others knew?

I still don't know if I will tell my relatives about the current piece of information. I mentioned it casually in very general terms to my sister whose interest in genealogy is casual at best. She wonderered what was so important about telling the story.

That struck me. That is the question at the root of every genealogical pursuit. And I heard the answer today on television when George Stephanopoulos was discussing how many Haitians would just disappear into history as if they never existed because of this tragic earthquake. Bodies would be shoveled into empty graves with no markers like the participants in a horrid magic trick. This is what happened to my black ancestors hundreds of years ago. I can't allow this to happen to my people if I can help it. I must mark their existence and record that they mattered to someone once upon a time.

It's Complicated

Several months ago I tweeted and commented about whether embarassing information should be disclosed in the name of genealogy.There had been a discussion about this during one of my genealogy group's meetings. I was on the side of disclosure. Others disagreed. They believed the information should be tabled until the parties were dead.

Now I have been presented with an actual dilemma. I was told that one of my relatives assaulted someone 50 years ago and fathered a child. This is something that I don't think the family knows about. The relative is dead and now the child is dead. The person that told me is an outside observer. The mother is still alive and there are grandchildren.

Now do I put my money where my mouth was? This relative has children still living and I have no idea how I would tell them about their unknown sibling. There is also a side of me that wants to embrace the grandchildren. They are innocent and they are blood. Things are so much more complicated when it isn't theoretical any more.

New Year, New Decade

New beginnings mean new starts. So of course, I resolve to do better than before. My resolutions include:

* First of all, posting more.

* Solving at least one mystery of my family's ancestors.

* I intend to visit Featherstone Castle in Northumberland County, England. This castle may have some connection to my Warren/Featherston roots. It will be mostly a trip of curiosity. I do not expect to have some profound epiphany while there.

* I hope to go to Mississippi once again but this time I will venture into the county courts. The trip to the state archive was monumentally disappointing.

* I will make at least one pilgrimage to one of the genealogy libraries, probably Fort Wayne, although I would love to get back to the Tennessee state archives and the national archives in D.C.

I realize resolutions are often broken so I'm trying not to reach too far beyond my grasp.