The Magic of Families

From the first Thanksgiving to this…there is magic in our past, and in families who share their stories across that long linen-covered table filled with the food of our nation. As Americans, we often mourn the loss of the nuclear family, but that loss is as old as this country. Those who came first left the safety of a more settled world for the new. And boom! (That’s my version of a nuclear explosion.) They didn’t all stay put; some moved, east to west century after century, connecting, shifting and moving on.

The magic that links us is in the details.

My husband’s family (both sides) came to America shortly after the Mayflower landed. You can call them early adopters, or people seeking religious freedom, either works. Though one group was from the Netherlands and the other from Great Britain, they both left the Netherlands for Massachusetts on the same boat. I have visions of them, one group in their wooden shoes and pointy white hats, the other in their black-and-white Puritan best, huddled in steerage, having a golly-really conversation about Puritanism. Neither group took to it. Those from England stayed in the Bay Colonies before heading south to Rhode Island, then to New Jersey, and finally to Pennsylvania.

The Nederlanders migrated to what became Johnson County, Indiana, where they farmed and became Presbyterians, producing many ministers. Then, almost three hundred years later, the offspring of these immigrants met in Syria, one as a missionary, the other teaching, and, well. Think of the time they could have saved if the two families had married into each other on the way to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

More magic

My father’s mother’s family were Cumberland gappers and verified DARers (yes, they’re in the book). The Alsace-Lorrainian farmers on the other side arrived in the 1830s. Reports handed down through the family drum, which has proven quite accurate, and, with a family bible as evidence, claim that one of those pesky people who keep marrying into families (you know the sort) also hung out in Johnson County, Indiana and married into my father’s line.

If the evidentiary bible is correct, that family sported a Low Countries surname, not dissimilar to that of my husband’s mother’s family.

So, did my husband’s relatives and mine coffee clatch back in Johnson County before each packed up and moved further west? My family to Illinois (is that really west?), my husband’s to Oregon, back when, though a state, it was pretty frontier-ish.

Ruminate on this: How do two people, one from Oregon and one from Pennsylvania, whose families shared passage on the same boat to the New World in the 1600s, end up in Syria about a day after Lawrence of Arabia left and marry each other? And how does their offspring end up marrying a woman in California whose family roosted in Johnson County, Indiana, in the 1800s, when one was born on the East Coast and the other in Illinois?

Gabble away over your turkey

You might discover connections to your past that lead to a future. I urge you to remember, as you write your next tale, nothing is too weird or coincidental when it comes to a family’s past (translation: the duck might be somebody’s uncle).

Happy Thanksgiving. Lots of Turkey. And hugs to all.

Update: For those of you who worried about my lost file. I found it!!!!!! And restored it!!!!! And the book, ‘The Orleans Lady’, is being beta-read right now!!!!

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