Tag Archives: genealogy

Goofing, Uncategorized

Blood won’t tell

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Yet another reviewless night. I am currently reading a book that’s turned out to be just plain sclerotic. But it’s sort of a classic, so I’ll finish it and give it a review – though not one the author would care for, were he still alive. So you’ve got that to look forward to. As for tonight… free association blogging, I guess.

Looking to the right of my keyboard, I behold an object that’s been with me since my father died, in 2000. It’s a souvenir shop item, a porcelain coaster emblazoned with the Walker family crest.

Which is a joke.

In looking around the net for an illustration, I found a lot of sources happy to sell me family coat of arms merchandise. But they’re not all in agreement as to what the Walker coat of arms looks like. This doesn’t mean they’re making it up as they go. It’s because there are in fact several Walker families in Britain, not necessarily related to each other, and they have different crests. I found the one pictured above on Amazon, and it looks relatively – though not exactly – like the one on my coaster.

All these diverse Walker crests have one salient feature in common – they’ve got nothing whatever to do with my family.

My family, as I’ve told you more than is probably excusable, is Scandinavian on all sides, and my paternal great-grandfather (whose name you wouldn’t be able to pronounce) joined his brother, who’d emigrated before him, in commandeering the name Walker.

A name they couldn’t even pronounce, as Norwegians have trouble with the letter “W.”

So having any object with a Walker coat of arms on it is only excusable as an act of whimsy. I’d be ashamed to think anyone thought I took it seriously.

My real family heritage is, like all family heritages, mixed. In the genealogical research I’ve done, I’ve found long lines of people who thought they’d had a good year if they made it through the winter without any children dying. Farmers and fishermen, and the occasional sailor, scraping out an existence on the northern fringe of Europe. Lots of cold winters in my heritage.

The most socially prominent ancestor I’ve documented was a lensmann (bailiff), a little like a local sheriff. There’s some mention of descent from some rich guy, but I’ve never followed that line back. And (as I’ve mentioned before) a couple of my ancestors earned a footnote in the history of Haugean Pietism in Norway.

I know people who can trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne. That’s less impressive, though, when we note that historians say pretty much every European alive is descended from that virile monarch. We Scandinavians may not share in that entirely, being on the periphery of the gene pool and somewhat isolated, but I figure I can confidently assume descent from King Harald Fairhair, who is said to have had (at least) a dozen sons.

The historical practical joke that really bids pomp take physic (Shakespeare reference) is that genealogy is a game of converging cones. You’ve got the cone of your ancestors, who double in number with each generation as you go back in time – two parents, four grandparents, etc. Meanwhile you’ve got the demographic population cone, which goes exactly the opposite way – the population of the world (or Europe, in this case) decreases with every generation going back. At some point in the past, you’ve got more ancestors than there are people in the gene pool. How is that possible? Well, many of them do double, or triple or quadruple, duty. You’re descended from them in multiple lines.

It’s at that point that one’s proud genetic heritage gets absorbed, as in some pantheist afterlife, into a great, undifferentiated mass. Any talk of “the best  blood” is nonsense. We’ve all got the same blood. Go far enough back, and that uniformity encompasses all continents and racial groups.

If we seek distinction, blood is a pretty poor path to follow. Character is better. Truth and faith are best of all.

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Then and now

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I wrote about my recent trip to northern Wisconsin a few inches down this page. The purpose of the expedition was, along with my brothers, to “get to know” one of our great-grandfathers, a colorful Norwegian immigrant named John B. Johnson.

Below is a picture I’ve shared on this blog before, showing John B. and his family (my grandmother is the little girl second from the left). The story of this photo, I’ve been told, is that they’d bought a fancy new glass door for the house, and they wanted to take a picture to commemorate the event (it’s hard to tell here, but under magnification you can see that my great-grandmother Olina, the woman on the left, is wearing an apron embroidered in the Norwegian Hardanger style. Such items were treasures — she had put on her best for the photo). At the last moment, however, a neighbor boy scrambled in to be in the picture too — and stood right in front of the new door. This neighbor boy, the tall drink of water, would years later marry the little girl, and they would be my mother’s parents.

The Johnson place

On our trip, we visited the site of the farm, and saw what was left (just near-buried concrete foundations). This picture shows the hill where the house stood.

The Johnson place 2016

Thus pass the glories of this world. Also its humilities.

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Foiled

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I’ve written before, somewhere on this blog (or its previous incarnation) about doing some genealogical detective work. I found a grave for a distant relative in Norway who was curious to find out what had happened to his great-grandfather. I took some pride in hunting the grave down, because I’m not a man designed by nature for sleuth work. Curiosity is not my strong suit, and I’d rather go to the dentist than ask a stranger a question.

There was another family mystery I thought I’d solved too. One of my great-grandfathers was mysterious in his origins. I didn’t know where he was born, and I wanted to know.

But my mother had told me some things about him, and I’d taken notes. One thing she said was that he came from an island known as the “middle island,” which was the largest island in Norway.

I did some web searching, and at last discovered that the island of Hinnøy, almost in the Lofotens, is in fact the largest in Norway, and somewhere I found it referred to as the “middle island.” So obviously, my ancestor must have come from there.

“Wrong, Watson,” said Holmes, smacking him with the Persian slipper.

A family member recently made contact with some relatives who had the straight dope, documents and all. Our great-grandfather came from the island of Ytterøy, near Trondheim.

I plead in my defense that Mom’s clues were misleading. Or someone misinformed her.

This is what comes from unreliable genes. No wonder I grew up to be a novelist.