Every family has a different sense of who their “relatives” are. Some families embrace nearly every far flung in-law as a “cousin” while other families are more particular about who they allow to claim a branch of their family tree. I had an interest in genealogy and family history from a young age and can recall asking my grandparents who their parents were, what their names were, where they were buried, etc. My grandparents’ surnames are Otto, Huffman, Creighton and McDowell, and I grew up with a firm sense of how these branches attached to our family tree. Our family is fairly small, even back through my grandparents’ generation, so we weren’t one of those families who had “cousins” to spare. I can recall that whenever we’d encounter a local with the surname of Otto or Huffman we’d declare that they mustn’t be any relative of ours or we’d know who they were. This sentiment wasn’t born out of any sense of genetic superiority, but more perhaps from a naiveté of how prolific our ancestors had been and how long their descendants remained in our home county.
During my high school years I completing a family tree chart that included all 16 of my great-great grandparents. Even after this project I tended to think of our family tree as having four main branches, one for each of my grandparents. Ancestors beyond these were, for me, lost in the ancestral mist, very far removed from the familiar branches of my tree I was used to hearing about.
This changed last year when my Mom asked me to go through an old chest of family things she got from my granddad's house after he passed away. Inside this trunk of old family papers and pictures was a genealogist's dream--a family history written by my great grandmother Huffman. Additionally, there was a picture of my 3rd great grandparents Thomas. It struck me that my great grandmother Huffman had labeled this picture "our grandfather John Thomas." Obviously any grandparents of hers would be direct ancestors of mine, but these great-great-great grandparents were far, far away from the branches of my family tree I was familiar with.
Think of your ancestors as the trunk of the family tree and yourself as a branch further on up. You’re familiar with all the nearby branches you can see: parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. You might have some sense of branches that are further away from you, closer to the trunk of the tree: great-grandparents and great-great grandparents. Any branches further away than these are usually obscured from our sight by all the leaves and branches in between; we know that more distant branches, and ultimately the trunk, are there, but we never give it any thought. So, being out on a branch of the tree and looking down we lose our sense of where we came from.
Now consider our ancestors’ perspective (which will someday be our own as our descendants multiply and add branches to the tree). Looking up from the trunk, we may not be able to see every branch and twig of the tree. Seen or unseen though, we know that every branch of the tree emanates from us and is an extended part of us. Considering my ancestors’ perspective is what caused me to experience my genealogical epiphany: every direct ancestor is a grandparent even if they’re on a distant, unfamiliar branch further down the tree. Put another way, would you ever consider your great-grand children as not being “yours” simply because they’re a few generations down the line? Of course not, and the same holds true when we look back up the line at our great-grand parents. It’s often the case that we never get to meet our great-grandparents--let alone great-great grandparents--and this lack of a face-to-face, direct reference is what adds to the genealogical mist between us and them.
Another part of my epiphany was the recognition of our female ancestors’ equal place in our genealogy. Women usually change their surname when they marry, making their ancestors harder to find later on. But while the names might change, the blood never does. We’ve got just as much of our grandmother’s blood in us as we do our grandfather’s. And while we might consider that the blood “thins” as it gets mixed making its way down through the generations, your fourth great grandmother is just as much your ancestor as is her husband, your fourth great grandfather.
Again, this may seem obvious to some. But recall my point about surnames above: it’s a lot easier to trace a male’s ancestry than a female’s. Add to this the fact that our society is patrilineal, meaning that we trace our ancestry through our father's line (Jewish culture, on the other hand, is matrilineal because they trace their ancestry through their mother's line of descent).
We might have certain social, cultural or familial perspectives regarding our genealogy, but perspective doesn’t change our blood. Thanks to my genealogical epiphany I now consider my direct ancestors as grandparents in my direct bloodline and not as distant relatives whose importance has been washed away by the procession of generations or the changing of names.
