Saturday, January 26, 2013

Why Converging Roots?

My roots are Southern - mostly, anyway. And I've begun to dig them up.

My mother's family is from sandy Southern North Carolina with a little bit of Georgia clay thrown in. My grandmother Bernhardt was a Pound from South Carolina. I do have some roots from the north but they aren't very deep, I lay claim to being a full-blooded Southerner.

Grandmother was very prim and proper. So, that is what I expected from her side of the family - nothing interesting, rather dull, and easy to tie together. She married Grandpop in Philadelphia. I still haven't figured out how a quiet South Carolina belle ended up married into a big city German family like Grandpop's, but she did, and they flourished, spending nearly sixty years together.

Grandaddy - now his family was robust. With all the legend and lore surely deep, dark secrets awaited me on my search! While I have found an interesting tale or two, for the most part they seem to have been a quiet family of farmers. The Cain's migrated to Southern North Carolina in the mid-1700's. Grandaddy's grandfather moved to Georgia in the 1880's but North Carolina must have been in the blood because Granddaddy came back before WWII where he met and married Grandmama.

Grandmama - I didn't have any real expectations when I started my search, but I certainly didn't expect what I found. Her family was large, and the county was small, so there were a lot of families marrying back into the same families...and they may not even have known it. I've since learned about "pedigree collapse" as explained by +Family Tree Magazine , and my family seems to have a lot of it.

So, I've decided to chronicle my journey along these "converging roots", and share with others what I have discovered and learned - not only about my family but about the trip it was getting there.