In her one-room apartment in her retirement community, my Grandma Evelyn started opening the first of many boxes of family history. She had spent much of her earlier years assembling endless family trees and organizing the information about her and her husband's lineage. She organized family reunions on Hood Canal. She discovered and confirmed our family's connection to the Revolutionary War and was active in Daughters of the American Revolution. They travelled to Virginia and even Scotland to visit gravesites and meet distant family members. She transcribed stories from World War II for Grandpa. She did it all without the help of the internet too, which is impressive in and of itself.
Looking through photo albums of a past reunion she mumbles, "They're just normal people."
Lots of names and dates. Trees and lists of kin. Landowners, laborers, surveyors, pioneers, even slave-owners. Families, large families of seven or more children. John, Robert, Evelyn, James, Sarah, Thomas. Babies and young children who didn't survive their childhood. Women dying in childbirth and husbands widowed.
If anyone is from an American family, it's me.
Our roots were originally from Scotland but this continent has been our home for almost three-hundred years. My ancestors presumably fought in the Revolutionary War and probably fought their kin during the Civil War, or known at the time as The War of the States.
But still, normal people. Nobody stands out as a great war hero or politician or businessman. Normal people living normal lives and doing what's expected to support themselves and their families.
In an age in which people are all special and "destined for greatness," this is the story of a normal family. One branch in a huge oak tree that eventually led to me.
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