I've been involved in genealogy research for years. The bug began after hearing my uncle relate details about a great great grandfather that he found in the National Archives during a trip to D.C. Prior to that, the only thing we knew about the family was where they had lived before migrating to the northern part of the state.
I didn't have the resources to dig into our roots back then. That changed with the advent of personal computers and the internet. Even then, research was slow, and it depended on what information I could get from others on email lists and what I could find on genealogy software. I hit several brick walls. When I began working at an international corporation, I had to put it aside altogether.
The bug returned several years ago after I began to see commercials for Ancestry.com's ethnicity DNA test. Intrigued, I asked my husband for a test for Christmas. The results and a subsequent monthly subscription to public records available on Ancestry's site changed my perception of myself and my family. I solved a long-time mystery on my paternal side, and my volatile, hate-filled, drama-loving maternal side began to make sense.
My entire maternal line lived in the Cumberland Plateau along the Pottsville Escarpment in SE Kentucky, and they are everything outsiders believe a Kentuckian to be. Caricatures non-residents developed from their knowledge of the blood feud between the Hatfields and McCoys. However, while my "people," as my aunts called them, were often involved in litigation with others, they kept the actual feuding within the family.
As was typical back in the day, my grandparents had numerous children. Some inherited the cold, stoic, heartlessness of my grandfather's line, and others the emotional volatility and tendency to commit adultery from their mother's (a tendency that skipped generations injured by a parent's betrayal, but which was taken up with glee by an occasional offspring.)
Unfortunately, my mother inherited such destructive traits from both sides. While some of her siblings simply got angry and cut other family members out of their lives for a decade or two, my mother caused one raging blow up after another and pitted family members against each another (even her own children) in a constant rage formed by the warring sides within her. She caused more injury in her long life than good, and I never understood it until I learned about the two sides of her family.
James Balwin, author of Go Tell It On the Mountain, wrote, "Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came."
I haven't read the book yet so I don't know the context, but for me, as a Christian who has experienced forgiveness and who has been taught to forgive, going back into my family's history and getting a glimpse of their hardships, their lives, and in some cases, their pain gave me a greater understanding of my "people" and the ripple effect their behavior had on my life.
I feel more connected than I ever have, and more objective about and compassionate for a family that once frustrated me to no end. I'm even still curious about them and would like to learn more. I plan to take a trip to the region in which they lived for over 200 years and, "travel their road." In doing so, I hope to learn even more about the ancestors and places from whence I came.