When Family History and Fandom Collide
Jan. 7th, 2011 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenny_wildcatI've been waiting all day to post about this.
Yesterday, I was bored clean out of my skull. It's that kind of bored where you have plenty you could be doing, but you have no desire to do any of it. I'd cleaned the kitchen and my room, fed all the pets, watched "Coraline," gone on a walk and worked on my latest cross-stitch project, but I was just so stinking bored. On a whim, I decided to look up some genealogy, as we LDS folk are wont to do.
Some relatively-quick backstory - my paternal grandparents died when I was fourteen - my grandma passed away in May 1999 and my grandpa in September of the same year. I was rather close to these grandparents, even though they were quite elderly and frail even when I was a little kid (my dad was one of those "surprise-later-in-life" children, so that explains why my grandparents were so old when I was born). Since they both passed away, my dad has told me many stories about my grandparents' (remind me to relate how my grandparents met and got married - it's about the cutest love story you'll ever hear).
One in particular about my grandma - Grandma Mary grew up in a little town in southern Idaho. Her father died when she was seven, but her mother's parents lived close by. Grandma was very close to her grandfather, so close that when she had kids, she gave one of her sons her grandfather's middle name of Mark (this has become a family tradition, as my brother's first name is Mark). In turn, Grandma's grandfather's middle name came from his mother's maiden name - her full name was Mary Mark Archibald after she got married (To sum up: Grandma Mary's mom was an Archibald and full-blood Scottish. But her dad was a Godfrey, which is from England. And if you've ever seen Braveheart... I'm sure those family gatherings were quite entertaining).
(Are you still following me on this? Trust me - it gets good).
Being the curious little person I am, I want to know where the Mark and Archibald names both come from. I got on FamilySearch.org and started digging. Turn out, both the Archibald side and the Mark side are from Scotland, which makes me 1/16th Scottish (squee!).
(Side note - When I was a kid, my dad was a leader in the Boy Scouts. One of the other leaders in the troop was obsessed with Scotland for whatever reason. Dad often said that he didn't know why because we were more Scottish than that guy was. But I digress).
If you've never been to FamilySearch.org (or never successfully navigated it - it can be quite the learning experience. I suggest using the old version of the site. It's much more manageable), each name you look up ideally has a number of dates and places - birth date and place, christening date and place, marriage date and place, death date and place. If there's one missing - well, someone in your family has some of their own digging to do. Luckily, my uncle's crazy ex-wife did our family's research twenty years ago (that's another story) and pretty much everyone has their full round of information. So, I consulted the All-Knowing, All-Seeing Wikipedia for further information:
Mary Mark was born on May 15 1863 in Wilsontown, Scotland. The Wikipedia entry for Wilsontown just referred to Wilsontown Ironworks, which is outside the village of Forth in South Lanarkshire (hey, even back in the 1800s, my family lived in the sticks!) But there really isn't much of note, which was sad, but oh well.
Now Mary's husband (Grandma's great-grandfather, which would make him my *counts on fingers* great-great-great-grandfather), James Russell Archibald was born in Greenrigg, West Lothian, Scotland on April 12, 1836. Again, the entry on Greenrigg isn't much to write home about, but it mentions that it's a "quick drive" to Whitburn - kids from Greenrigg actually go to school in Whitburn. So, I look that up. Whitburn's a slightly bigger town situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh (now we're getting somewhere! Do note that I did some other clicking and page searching during all of this, but I want to get to the good part of the story before my great-great-great-grandchildren are old enough to do their own family history research).
But I'm still not convinced - so I click on the entry of West Lothian (the county Greenrigg's part of). It's more substantial - listing the geography, places of interest, mentions in popular culture... oh look - it's a list of famous people from West Lothian and ... no way... no way... NO FREAKING WAY! (third bullet down):
skjdgiar ehgjwr hgawasdfdsagsgwrr oarhsadgsa asgrg ergdfsdsdfd sadawoih WHAAAAAAAT???? ARE YOU FRAKKING KIDDING ME???
Turns out - going back to the Whitburn page - Bathgate is only four miles from Whitburn. WHICH MEANS - David Tennant was born close to where my ancestors lived back lots of years ago - AND MY FANGIRL MIND IS ON OVERLOAD!! (and there's Susan Boyle - who's pretty cool too).
Okay, okay - I realize that this is going back nearly 200 years and it isn't that big of a deal - but this is not something you expect to find when you start doing genealogy. I mean, it was awesome enough finding out part of my ancestral line goes back to Scotland (because, if you've grown up in the LDS Church in Utah, everyone and their dog's from England and it's sort of non-special. No offense to everyone out there who traces their roots back to England. Honestly, when it boils down to it, I'm probably more English than anything else - but dude... it's Scotland) - but finding out that my ancestors lived not-that-far-away from where David Tennant is from... excuse me while I giggle inanely.
This probably isn't what the scripture meant when it said "turning the hearts of the children to the fathers"... but it's just crazy enough that I'll take it :)
Anyway, I had to share that with you all because if I try to explain that to my family, they won't quite get the significance of it. Actually, I'm not sure I do, but it's cool nonetheless. So cool that - going back and reading the post - it's quite lyrical, if I do say so myself. Nothing gets the poetry going like a bout with the inner fangirl.
Yesterday, I was bored clean out of my skull. It's that kind of bored where you have plenty you could be doing, but you have no desire to do any of it. I'd cleaned the kitchen and my room, fed all the pets, watched "Coraline," gone on a walk and worked on my latest cross-stitch project, but I was just so stinking bored. On a whim, I decided to look up some genealogy, as we LDS folk are wont to do.
Some relatively-quick backstory - my paternal grandparents died when I was fourteen - my grandma passed away in May 1999 and my grandpa in September of the same year. I was rather close to these grandparents, even though they were quite elderly and frail even when I was a little kid (my dad was one of those "surprise-later-in-life" children, so that explains why my grandparents were so old when I was born). Since they both passed away, my dad has told me many stories about my grandparents' (remind me to relate how my grandparents met and got married - it's about the cutest love story you'll ever hear).
One in particular about my grandma - Grandma Mary grew up in a little town in southern Idaho. Her father died when she was seven, but her mother's parents lived close by. Grandma was very close to her grandfather, so close that when she had kids, she gave one of her sons her grandfather's middle name of Mark (this has become a family tradition, as my brother's first name is Mark). In turn, Grandma's grandfather's middle name came from his mother's maiden name - her full name was Mary Mark Archibald after she got married (To sum up: Grandma Mary's mom was an Archibald and full-blood Scottish. But her dad was a Godfrey, which is from England. And if you've ever seen Braveheart... I'm sure those family gatherings were quite entertaining).
(Are you still following me on this? Trust me - it gets good).
Being the curious little person I am, I want to know where the Mark and Archibald names both come from. I got on FamilySearch.org and started digging. Turn out, both the Archibald side and the Mark side are from Scotland, which makes me 1/16th Scottish (squee!).
(Side note - When I was a kid, my dad was a leader in the Boy Scouts. One of the other leaders in the troop was obsessed with Scotland for whatever reason. Dad often said that he didn't know why because we were more Scottish than that guy was. But I digress).
If you've never been to FamilySearch.org (or never successfully navigated it - it can be quite the learning experience. I suggest using the old version of the site. It's much more manageable), each name you look up ideally has a number of dates and places - birth date and place, christening date and place, marriage date and place, death date and place. If there's one missing - well, someone in your family has some of their own digging to do. Luckily, my uncle's crazy ex-wife did our family's research twenty years ago (that's another story) and pretty much everyone has their full round of information. So, I consulted the All-Knowing, All-Seeing Wikipedia for further information:
Mary Mark was born on May 15 1863 in Wilsontown, Scotland. The Wikipedia entry for Wilsontown just referred to Wilsontown Ironworks, which is outside the village of Forth in South Lanarkshire (hey, even back in the 1800s, my family lived in the sticks!) But there really isn't much of note, which was sad, but oh well.
Now Mary's husband (Grandma's great-grandfather, which would make him my *counts on fingers* great-great-great-grandfather), James Russell Archibald was born in Greenrigg, West Lothian, Scotland on April 12, 1836. Again, the entry on Greenrigg isn't much to write home about, but it mentions that it's a "quick drive" to Whitburn - kids from Greenrigg actually go to school in Whitburn. So, I look that up. Whitburn's a slightly bigger town situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh (now we're getting somewhere! Do note that I did some other clicking and page searching during all of this, but I want to get to the good part of the story before my great-great-great-grandchildren are old enough to do their own family history research).
But I'm still not convinced - so I click on the entry of West Lothian (the county Greenrigg's part of). It's more substantial - listing the geography, places of interest, mentions in popular culture... oh look - it's a list of famous people from West Lothian and ... no way... no way... NO FREAKING WAY! (third bullet down):
skjdgiar ehgjwr hgawasdfdsagsgwrr oarhsadgsa asgrg ergdfsdsdfd sadawoih WHAAAAAAAT???? ARE YOU FRAKKING KIDDING ME???
Turns out - going back to the Whitburn page - Bathgate is only four miles from Whitburn. WHICH MEANS - David Tennant was born close to where my ancestors lived back lots of years ago - AND MY FANGIRL MIND IS ON OVERLOAD!! (and there's Susan Boyle - who's pretty cool too).
Okay, okay - I realize that this is going back nearly 200 years and it isn't that big of a deal - but this is not something you expect to find when you start doing genealogy. I mean, it was awesome enough finding out part of my ancestral line goes back to Scotland (because, if you've grown up in the LDS Church in Utah, everyone and their dog's from England and it's sort of non-special. No offense to everyone out there who traces their roots back to England. Honestly, when it boils down to it, I'm probably more English than anything else - but dude... it's Scotland) - but finding out that my ancestors lived not-that-far-away from where David Tennant is from... excuse me while I giggle inanely.
This probably isn't what the scripture meant when it said "turning the hearts of the children to the fathers"... but it's just crazy enough that I'll take it :)
Anyway, I had to share that with you all because if I try to explain that to my family, they won't quite get the significance of it. Actually, I'm not sure I do, but it's cool nonetheless. So cool that - going back and reading the post - it's quite lyrical, if I do say so myself. Nothing gets the poetry going like a bout with the inner fangirl.
