"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors." (Edmund Burke)

Perhaps because both sets of my grandparents were immigrants to America, genealogy has always been a very strong interest for me. My maternal grandparents were from Scotland, and my paternal grandparents were from Romania. (Below is my Great Auntie Katie in Carstairs Village, Scotland.)


Growing up as small children, my siblings and I definitely experienced what would be considered an "extended family," as we saw our grandparents constantly, and they had a huge impact on our lives. I was very much aware of their immigrant experience through my exposure to them and their worlds, and I've always been acutely aware of how fortunate I am that I had them in my life. (Below, l-r: from my paternal side of the family, my Aunt Rose and Uncle Cas with another relative, Teresa.)


Some years back, I spent about six years doing a lot of research on our family's ancestors, particularly on my maternal Scottish grandparents' side. (My father has generously amassed a fair bit of information about our paternal Romanian grandparents' history, but as anyone who's done genealogical research knows, the work is never-ending, and one day, I'm sure I'll be picking it all up again.) I have collected passports, ship manifests coming through Ellis Island, letters, photos, books, and all sorts of anecdotal stories that I hold dear.

As a tiny child, my mother traveled back to Scotland by ship with her brother Edward, and they both lived there for several years, while my immigrant grandmother was ill here in America. There was no one else to care for the children here in America, since my grandfather worked, and so the children were sent overseas to be with aunties who nurtured and coddled them until they could return and be with their parents again. I often think how hard that must have been for my grandparents to be separated from their tiny children and for the children to be uprooted and sent to Scotland. Thankfully, my mother always had happy memories of that period, and shared much of her experience there with me. (Below: mommy and Uncle Ed's passport for heading back to Scotland:)


I'd initially become interested in doing research on our ancestors because my mom had MS (Multiple Sclerosis) and I had read that Scotland had the highest number of cases of MS worldwide. I was curious if any other relatives had had it in the past. (Supposedly, MS is not hereditary, but there is most likely a genetic predisposition to it.) (Below: l-r: my Grandmother Susan and my Great-grandmother Mary:)


Even as a child, I would marvel at Grandma Schmidt, who left Romania as a young teenager, and traveled by ship to America, barely speaking a word of English, off to make a new life. And Grandma and Grandpa McClafferty taught us things about life in the old villages "back home." Grandma often created entertaining stories that undoubtedly involved people from her past as she wove tales for us as children. I remember thinking, even as a young girl, that my grandparents were "neither fish nor fowl;" not exactly like other Americans, but no longer exactly like those they'd left behind, either. The struggles they faced in their homelands, and the difficulties they faced in a new land, enriched my world probably more than it ever did their own. (Below: Grandma Schmidt's wedding: sadly, I never knew my paternal Grandfather, as he died when I was about 2 months old):

I recently discovered a hauntingly beautiful song that I'd like to share.

It's about the whole immigrant experience, and it struck such a chord with me. A man in Washington, DC, of Irish-American descent, named Peter Jones, discovered a stack of old letters written by his Irish ancestors back home in Kilkelly, County Mayo, Ireland, to his family, and the letters tell the tale of the lives and struggles of these people: those who were left behind and those who went off, emigrating to new lives elsewhere. He put the words in these letters to music, in a beautifully melancholic ballad called "Kilkelly:"

Six degrees of separation

“The Internet has been the most fundamental change during my lifetime and for hundreds of years.” (-Rupert Murdoch)

My grandmother’s blue and white pitcher traveled in a physical journey by ship, all the way from Scotland to America. It was long ago broken, and I patched and nursed it together again with glue some years back. I’ve called upon it to hold flowers over the years, and often, as I fill it with water, I think about how much life it's lived, and how well it has survived. Then, it also traveled with me over the years to Virginia and North Carolina, still durable despite its mended cracks and age lines.

Late last night, I was browsing through my Flickr photostream as I am often wont to do, and I learned that a woman I “know” through the Internet, named Karin, who is living and teaching students in China, had her birthday today. I was excited for her, and then immediately had to calculate in my mind whether or not my note I would write to her would be a belated happy birthday in her time zone.

None of us any longer has to physically move at all; I can “travel” vicariously to distant lands and over time zones in a way that I never imagined would be possible some years ago, and all the while, I never have to leave the comfort of my own couch.

I’ve “met” a distant cousin in Scotland I’d never have known if not for the Internet and the genealogy work I did. To date, I have never physically met him, but I’ve Skyped him for hours on the computer and feel almost as if I’ve sat with him in the same room.

Every day, I interact with so many people around the globe whom I’ve never met, and some I may never meet, and yet I somehow feel I know them and understand at least some of the things that make them tick. They each enrich me on a daily basis. I have so many new “friends” in my world: an interesting gentleman, John Ward, in England, whose walks along the Thames fascinate me; another couple in Australia, Ray and Lorna Tomes; Jane and Bob Humphrey, a wonderfully charming couple in California, whom I've actually met; Karin Faulkner in China, who continually educates me about fascinating and foreign cultures; Chris Bonney, the wonderful photographer, in Virginia Beach, whose acerbic wit continues to delight me; Carol Gillott, that fabulously creative artist of "Paris Breakfast" fame, in New York, with whom I spoke on the phone just yesterday; Jeanette Sclar in Missouri; and a number right in my own back yard, Lin Frye and Laura Frankstone, two more inspired artists whom I never would have even known existed but for that amazing tool…the Internet. I have actually gone sketching with people around the country I've met through that wonderful vehicle. I even had a woman send me a note asking if she could buy the rights for something I had posted so she could use it for a young children's board book she is publishing.

Yesterday, I noted that on one of my blog posts recently, I received a note from the distant descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Willow, from “Life at Willow Manor” (in Ohio) noted “That is totally amazing that a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s commented on your blog” and I most definitely have to agree.

“I have an almost religious zeal…not for technology per se, but for the Internet, which is for me, the nervous system of Mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up.”
(-Dan Millman)

“If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?” (-Lily Tomlin)

When my grandparents came from Scotland to America, my grandfather Edward arrived first. He was going to find a place for them to live and help establish things before my grandmother Susan came to meet him here.

The two of them had been avid readers of a romance novel in Scotland that described so-called everyday life in America, and it made America sound like a wild frontier all over the country. The story's focus was on cowboys and the excitement of blazing new territories in this new, wild land. The main characters in the novel were “Saxon” and “Billy.”

Well, when my grandfather first came here, he found a house and expected to situate himself in the middle of the USA, in Kansas, and found a big white house with a wrap-around porch and airy land around it. My grandmother was not happy there, though, and they wound up living in New Jersey, much closer to the hustle and bustle of New York City.

Once, years later, my mom had bought a dozen yellow roses for my grandfather for his birthday, and I asked her why she was giving him that. She explained to me that they stood “for the yellow rose of Texas,” because that was a favorite song of his, and he never really got to live the life he had expected, as a cowboy, in America.

One of my prized possessions is a small autograph book, faded and old, dating from the early 1900's, that belonged to my grandmother and it has wonderful drawings and poems in it that tell a rich history of life back in Scotland. For example, there are images relating to World War I on the frontispiece in it, with sailors under a moon, at war, that is “the same moon shining over” the woman waiting behind at home. And there is a caricature of two men celebrating “Hogmanay” the New Year’s celebration in Scotland. My grandfather had a great sense of humor and some of the lines evoke that. One of his entries says: "No woman, on her way to buy a new hat, has ever been known to commit suicide." I cherish it and remember them whenever I look at it.

In it there are several lines written about Saxon and Billy, which is what my grandparents sometimes called each other…

“We need not think alike to love alike.”
(-Francis David)

Song for Susan

Song for Susan

Kettle whistles, “Habit now,”
Seems to sing its wistful tune
Sixty years, the ready sound
Sixty years, tea at noon…

(-sue)

My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Scotland, and they figured very prominently in my childhood. When I was young, I wrote a poem about Grandma Susan. Her inclination was to have a Tea Party every day of her life.

As a child, I loved visiting her, because she was an eccentric woman with artistic tendencies. She’d draw and write songs and poems, and entertained us for hours with the stories she made up, that literally lasted for weeks. They’d be continued on our next visit, while we longed to hear the end of her tales. During the winter, she’d bundle us up with her in a huge blanket, and sit with us on the rug, telling us we’d be like “the Babes in the Woods.” While we didn't really know who the babes in the woods were, when she said that, we knew we were about to be transported into her imaginary world of handsome lads and lovely lasses being swept away to balls, like something out of Jane Austen, through the machinations of the little old women who populated her stories.

But the thing I enjoyed the most with grandma was afternoon Tea. She baked every single day, and while the smells of oatmeal cookies and orange marmalade would emanate from her kitchen, she’d put a kettle on for a spot of tea. Her cups and saucers were lovely china, and she had utensils that had real ivory handles on them. The aromas and warm steam coming up from the cups are images and rituals I will always associate with her. She made me a tea lover for life.

"A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwords." (-AA Milne)