The Last Ten Fathers

 

The last ten 'fathers' of various Great and degrees featured in my series of posts name "Thirty Fathers in Thirty Days", took much longer than thirty days, more like three months. They included:

-A grandfather my mother never met who, surprisingly, died of a drug overdose in the early 1930's, at a time when drug abuse was not something I expected to find.

- A fire and brimstone Baptist Minister from Scotland who came to America to preach to the heathens on the Carolina frontier, which is now the NC Piedmont.

- An early arrivial to the James River who was orphaned, grew up with his grandfather and became the High Sheriff of the new colonial Virginia County of Surry.

- An ancestor with a lengthy family tree all the way back to an Alderman in the Court of Henry VIII, and the brother of a famous explorer, who links together both my father and stepfathers' family trees, seven generations back.

-An ancestor with a 'less common' surname and given name who became a link that broke down a brick wall and led from a disappearing Anson County family to early Virginia origins.

- An ancestor with a famous and wealthy father-in-law, who couldn't stay out of debt and died a pauper.

- Another ancestor with old Stanly County roots on Mountain Creek who may have been a resident of one its earliest ghost towns. 

- An early Virginia miller with French Huguenot roots. 

- A Stanly County ancestor who managed three families, one wife and two mistresses and their children, all at once, and taught his same-named son to do the same. 

-A Mecklenburg County ancestor with Scottish roots and a direct root of Presbyterian trails through Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia to Rocky River Presbyterian. 

With the surnames of Wallace, McGregor, Exum, Collier, Mauldin, Means, Marriott, Calloway, Burris and Hudson, some from each grandparent's lines and roots from the British Isles, and France. 

The given names in this bunch were heavy on the "M's", Mathew, Mathias, Micajah, and "J's", Jonah, Job, Joachim, Joshua, and of course, John, with a Thomas and a William. 

Not everyone made the cut, and not everyone could, but I am ready to move on to something else.  This project was fun, but took me far more than 30 days, and gave me inspiration and curiosity to give a closer look at things I may have overlooked before. Primarily, it reminded me of what a salad I carry in my genes.