Family Trees

Trace your family tree back six generations. This item was checked off and completed prior to me even coming into existence.

My mother is to say it, family tree obsessed. It's more like a family forest at this time. Mormon's believe that you need to perform certain ordinances for your ancestors or they (your ancestors) cannot go to heaven. As a result of that believe, they (the Mormons) have an extensive collection of genealogy records which are accessible via the internet.

My family has two main branches or groups of relatives, those from Ireland, and those from Denmark. The Irish branch is from an Irish clan and still exist today. We've corresponded with them a few times too and have an invite to visit their castle in Ireland should we ever decide to go there. (Not something that particularly interests me, even though I do like Ireland.) The Irish arrived in North America in the early 1700s and fought on the side of the British during the revolutionary war (they were Tories). When the war was lost, they lost their holdings and to flee to Canada. They did not return to the US till the mid-1800s and in Northern Idaho at that.

The Danish branch is much more interesting, as they were legitimate Viking raiders. Not only do we know of their existence from their own records, but from the records of the people that they raided. Fortunately, the linage here hits royalty and so we have remarkably good records, enabling us to trace the family history back to the 9th century.

I wish I could tell you that this information was influential or impactful to me outside of being an interesting factoid, but it is simply party trivial these days. More impactful to me is the evolution of the family in the 1800s. Around that time frame, on my father's side, the first members of my family would find and join the Mormon church as they migrated into Idaho. This coupled with their strong Irish roots would define much of how the family operates today. For example, the tight connection between family members (weekly sync up call) or being patriarchal are a combination of Irish and Mormon values. This relationship developed and was solidified by the 1900s and all generations of my family since then have been fairly in line with that structure.

My father for example, had 5 brothers and sisters, and his father also had 5 brothers, and his father had 8 brothers and sisters (and the pattern continues on). I am an exception here in that I have no children. This isn't my choice though, but rather an impact of having cancer.

But for those of my siblings that do have children, I think the culture will flow through them and likely continue on.