Family Stuff

[poliphilo]

We drove through Highgate Village yesterday and noticed that the memorial tat has been removed from the little garden in front of George Michael's old home. The residents have had enough of it. Obviously it wasn't going to last forever but I felt a twinge of regret; in its day it was a sight to see- and all the more touching for being disorganised and unofficial.

Aria has just had a birthday (her fifth) and we were getting together at Granny Becky and Granny Karen's house. Festivities included a paddling pool and a hose- and some of us got very wet. Karen had made a fabulous fish soup.

Becky has been researching her family history. Oral tradition says there's a Cherokee woman somewhere down the line but DNA testing couldn't find her. Written records show a great-great-somebody who was an Allen and almost certainly a Quaker- which raises the ghost of a possibility that Becky and I are distant cousins. Another bunch of ancestors (Cartwrights I think) are recorded as having pioneered down the Ohio river on flatboats in the 1780s, losing two members of their party in an altercation with the locals (probably Shawnees) near Bear Creek Falls, Kentucky.

Comments

[athenais]

White Americans very often have a vague family story about a Native American ancestor, but it's rarely borne out by DNA testing.

[cmcmck]

That said, many families in the UK claim Romani ancestry (all those 'stolen by the Gypsies' legends) and in my case, it happens to be a fact- one of my great grandads was full blood Romani born in a vardo (travelling caravan) which makes me Didaki, part Roma. :o)

Which could mean part of my DNA would be from northern India!

[poliphilo]

.. which is a pity, I think.