I was alerted to a blog post by Gail Dever in her
“crème de la crème” post this week: How to Write about your Boring
Ordinary Ancestors by Jessica Benjamin.
I had seen another post by Chris Paton on his The
GENES Blog recently as well, titled, Boring
Ancestors?! That one was a reprise of an article he had written in 2009.
If you search the Internet for “boring ancestors” you
actually get quite a few hits.
I confess I have had similar thoughts about my
ancestors, that they were, for the most part, just regular people – no royalty,
brigand, explorer, cult figure, war hero or captain-of-industry types. And none
of them descended from Charlemagne! In other words: Boring!
But . . . however one might want to characterize them,
from my parents on back as far as I can trace my forebears, having now given
some thought to the idea, I do not think they were boring at all. One does not
have to be royalty, brigand, explorer, cult figure, war hero or captain of
industry to be adventurous or entrepreneurial, generous or kind, witty or
clever, affable or gregarious, loyal or encouraging, or kind-hearted or
benevolent. Probably with few exceptions I can point to my ancestors as having
been hard-working, strong-minded, supportive, caring, determined,
family-oriented people. And that is definitely not boring!
Many of my family members have had relatively normal occupations
or careers: farmers, carpenters, mason, mechanics, salespeople, etc. They may
not have made headlines in their trades or professions, but their work was no
less valuable to themselves and the people around them. Raising a family and
providing for their welfare is not boring. Depending on the circumstances,
though, it might be considered meritorious. I have not yet found an ancestor
that did not have some trials and tribulations in their lives that they
persevered through.
My wife and I both have very close family members that
decided to uproot from their (boring?) lives in Britain and strike out for
Canada. They had nothing much to their names in terms of wealth or possessions,
but they had a determination to find a new life in an unknown world.
My paternal grandfather was just 16 when, in 1907, he
boarded the Empress of Britain in
Liverpool, England, bound for Canada. He may have fibbed a bit about his age
which was shown on the passenger manifest as 19. On his own, he worked in
Ontario before coming to Alberta where he was employed as a wrangler for a
while. After marriage he became a farmer, though I understand not a great one. His
father joined him in Alberta in 1913 and went homesteading himself, in 1926, at
the age of 61. How boring is that?
My maternal grandfather was born in Kansas in 1870,
homesteaded in Oklahoma in 1893, returned with his wife and family to farm in
Kansas in 1904, then moved to Washington about 1912, again to farm, and to Oregon
around 1915. Their final move was to Alberta, Canada in 1928. Grandpa was 58
then and looking to start all over with new, unbroken farm land.
My wife’s mother came to Canada, in 1930, at the age
of 21, settling in Calgary. She knew no one here and was obligated to work as a
domestic to pay off her passage. Her husband, my wife’s father, had arrived in
1927, to work first for an uncle on a farm in Saskatchewan and then on to
Calgary a year or so later. Both came with only their dreams.
Many other great-grandparents uprooted their families
and immigrated to Canada and the US, most in the 19th century.
Others before them had migrated to different parts of the British Isles, also
seeking opportunity. None of their lives could said to be boring as they were
continually challenged to make a living and raise a family.
Once the earliest immigrants of my mother’s family had
arrived in the US, in the 17th and 18th centuries, many made
their way across the country, different generations settling in Maryland,
Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Oklahoma and Oregon. My father’s ancestors
arrived in Ontario, then moved around the province and subsequently to North
Dakota before my great-grandparents made their way to Alberta. I cannot imagine
starting up new farms around the continent was boring.
My wife’s ancestors originated in many different parts
of Scotland, from the Shetland Islands to Glasgow. They were fishermen,
farmers, career army men, weavers and domestic servants, a few having several
different occupations within their own lifetimes. They went to wherever there
was work and opportunity.
And yet they were all just regular people – boring
people according to some definitions.
I can attest that among more recent generations, we have
lots on non-boring people. Some family get-togethers are exceedingly un-boring.
I suspect there are no boring people, especially in
our past family trees. Nor ever have been! Every family is exciting in its own
way, all people being different.
It is not what ship an ancestor boarded, what house
they lived in or what crop they grew that is important; it’s why they boarded
the ship, why they chose to go and live where they did and whether they chose
to be a farmer, or something else, that is the real story. The addresses and
dates might be boring; the lives of the people are not, not even for regular
folk.
