In Search of our Noble Ancestors...".You Gotta Hear This!!! " or, " Now I Know Why My Family is Nuts"

My kids are getting tired of my new interest, and yes, it can be difficult to endure stories about this granny or that granny, and do you realize that you are #3,598,679,100 in line for the British Monarchy!!!  I can't believe our last name isn't Windsor.  Just imagine we're royals. (almost).

There are many reasons to research ancestry.  In some cases the reasons are religious.  In other cases it is wanting to know where you come from.  How many nationalities are in your tree.  Solve burning family mysteries.  Simple curiosity.  Find that ultra rich ancestor and curse him for leaving all of the "family" fortune to that good for nothing son who squandered it all away three hundred years ago.  Now there is none left to go around.  Do you know how rich a person could be right now?  I know I would be doing so well that I would be stealing $2500.00 one of a kind necklaces and have the paparazzi all over me.  Oh what I've missed!

If anyone out there thinks like I do, (heaven forbid), it is assumed that everyone who came before lived in a sparkling rose colored snow globe world, where nothing went wrong and Mr. and Mrs. Charming lived happily ever after.  Luckily,the truth is sooo much more interesting.

While friends share heroic stories of ocean crossings where Grandpa MacStrongly literally carried the crippled ship on his shoulders, kicking madly, while his dutiful wife hollowed out the center of three ores, connecting  one atop the other,  then, with sheer will and her petite, but busty frame, held the super snorkel steady, in raging waters, so, her hero, her knight in shining Armour, could breath until all reached the shore and safety.

Admit it, most of us have one of those "tales" in our background.  Not me, every time I think I have found the family hero, a slight wrinkle appears.  For example:   the story of, "Our Family's Very Own Fighter for Religious Freedom"

It begins with a well respected family, coming to America, settling in the earliest of the glorious colonies that began this great nation of ours.  The father, I believe his name to be James, signed the Mayflower Compact.  He had a son named John, who at first glance seems to be "Our Very Own Fighter for Religious Freedom." aka OVOFFRF.  His fight was with the established church and unjust Sabbath Day laws if one were to believe differently.  He even spent the last third of his life, after forming his own religious sect, fighting for the cause.  At last our hero appears.  Oh yeah!  The wrinkle.

A historian writes, "The Rogerenes were a sort of Quaker, who had their origin and name from one John Rogers of New London."  I guarantee the Quakers didn't claim him or them.  "He was a man of unbounded ambition and wished to be something more than the common man...to gratify his pride."  Now, as a wise man once said, "heeres theee rest of the story".

Clearly below we will see why the wonderful Quaker faith might take umbrage at the comparison.

OVOFFRF methods of "bringing down The Man", so to speak, would be on the controversial side today.

I'll just make a list.

1. Goes to church naked.  Since OVOFFRF and his Rogerenes observed a Saturday sabbath they would enter public assemblies on "The Lord's day" "nearly or quite naked...behaving in wild tumultuous ways, crying out and charging the most venerable of ministers with lies and false doctrines."  Oh my!

2.  Disturbing the peace.  "...tuned their pipes and screamed, roared, shouted and stamped."

3.  Wife something?  When OVOFFRF's wife had had enough she was granted a divorce, then married a very nice gentleman.  Her ex didn't get it.  He tried to kidnap her from the bed of her new beloved.

4.  Oh yeah, he burned down a church.

5.  Finally, he was immune to all disease.  He went to Boston during a smallpox epidemic, sat by the afflicted and announced he was safe from the disease.  Triumphant he returned home and a few days later dies of smallpox.  Happily we end the story of OVOFFRF.  There is just one more tiny wrinkle; when he gets home from Boston he exposes his daughter-in-law and his grandson, and takes them with him.

As mentioned above, there are many reasons to research your ancestors.  I decided with this little family blotch, I uncovered a great family mystery.  "Now I Know Why My Family is Nuts"

Until next time...