This is a record of my ancestors, drawn from a variety of sources. Sources include, but are not limited to, living memory of my family members, family papers, and a plethora of hints gleaned from Ancestry.com. I don’t always know the actual sources of any one piece of information, so I will not always provide sources. Except for information about me and those relatives I know, or have known, in life, none of the information is my personal creation. It is impossible to own the names, dates, and places of one’s ancestry, the way one would own authorship of a literary work.
I do not for one moment claim that this work is complete or all-encompassing. I know that there are people, places, dates, and relationships that are incorrect, contradictory, or missing altogether. I hope that I can fill in the gaps in some later edition. For now, even an incomplete look at history is enough to start with. I will state that no piece of information in this book has been deliberately falsified by me, and I have done all that I know how to do with the resources presently available to me to make it as accurate as I know how.
Readers may notice that certain ancestral lines wander into the realms of mythology or of Biblical tradition. I report what I have collected, even if it seems far-fetched or absurd to be descended from gods of any kind. I ask that you bear with me in these far distant corners of my ancestry. I would like to find more credible ancestors, but we cannot choose our relatives.
I have chosen to trace my ancestry back from me, since that is the one point in my family tree of which I am completely sure. In each generation back in time, I include those ancestors whom I can identify, even if I know only part of a name, or if I know that someone is the grandchild of a particular other person. When my information on a particular line runs out, I simply don’t include that line in the next generation back.
advertisement