I’m the eldest of three siblings and I somehow became the genealogist for our family. My parents are long dead and both my husband and I did DNA testing with 23andMe and Ancestry. I avoided doing genealogy on my own for years as I dreaded that the family would produce ne’er do wells like my violent, alcoholic grandfather. After a while, I relented and gave in to curiosity about my origins.
The results were not much different from what I expected. I’m an amalgamation of French Canadian and Polish Americans with some Irish, English and other nationalities blended in. The family line I was able to follow back the farthest is on my maternal grandmother’s side. Her family was among the founders of Caraquet, New Brunswick (in the early 1600s) which today is the center of French Canadian (Acadian) culture in the Maritime Provinces. Those ancestors include a Mik Maq Indian woman. Intermarriage with the native population was common in that province.
About ten years ago, my husband and I visited New Brunswick. The first grave we encountered in the cemetery was my great grandfather’s. I am related to most of the surnames in Caraquet.
The most poignant encounter on this journey has been meeting up with a woman whose mother relinquished her for adoption. Between the paperwork she had from her adoptive parents and my knowledge of my father’s siblings, my brother and I were able to determine who her mother is. Her mother is in her mid-80s and after contacting Catholic Social Services, the daughter was left with the information that her mother did not want to meet her. That was really sad.
My brother has the archive of family photographs and someday we will meld the papertrail of ancestors and the visual evidence to get a clearer picture of our background. Meanwhile, it remains a partly solved puzzle. There is less information on the Polish side of the family and I may yet get to investigate that as well.
— Oxnard15
The results were not much different from what I expected. I’m an amalgamation of French Canadian and Polish Americans with some Irish, English and other nationalities blended in. The family line I was able to follow back the farthest is on my maternal grandmother’s side. Her family was among the founders of Caraquet, New Brunswick (in the early 1600s) which today is the center of French Canadian (Acadian) culture in the Maritime Provinces. Those ancestors include a Mik Maq Indian woman. Intermarriage with the native population was common in that province.
About ten years ago, my husband and I visited New Brunswick. The first grave we encountered in the cemetery was my great grandfather’s. I am related to most of the surnames in Caraquet.
The most poignant encounter on this journey has been meeting up with a woman whose mother relinquished her for adoption. Between the paperwork she had from her adoptive parents and my knowledge of my father’s siblings, my brother and I were able to determine who her mother is. Her mother is in her mid-80s and after contacting Catholic Social Services, the daughter was left with the information that her mother did not want to meet her. That was really sad.
My brother has the archive of family photographs and someday we will meld the papertrail of ancestors and the visual evidence to get a clearer picture of our background. Meanwhile, it remains a partly solved puzzle. There is less information on the Polish side of the family and I may yet get to investigate that as well.
— Oxnard15
I love this story even with the sadness. I love that you let yourself look. You tell this story with lovely hesitancy, a toe-in-the-water boldness, and what I hear as the ultimate resiliency of moving forward to gain knowledge and connection. Cheering and wild applause!!
ReplyDeleteI remember you writing about the violent alcoholic grandfather before. Now there are more admirable ancestors. The New Brunswick connections are amazing. Is the woman whose mother did not want to meet her... related to you? I did not quite understand the connection. Nicely written summation of searching for your roots, and of course it goes on... (My mother is Polish, and although one of my aunts visited cousins in Poland years ago, I do not have any contact information.) (Macoff)
ReplyDeleteWonderful work. I used to pooh pooh geneology when my brother first got interested. Then of course it turned our lives upside down. There is an online group called "NPE Friends" the NPE you probably know stands for Non _Paternal Event. It is amazing how often adopted kids find their birth parents non receptive. That site is filled with it. Good luck on the Polish journey. Eastern European groups are often harder to tract than the French/English. Cheers to you for your writing and this work.
ReplyDeleteSitting over here reading, reading jaw-dropping stories of boldness and tenderness and some sad (to me) unwillingness to revisit the past and, somehow, too, the now and the future. Caring overflows.
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