Mana's Musings

A friend of mine recently opened an account on Ancestry.com and started poking around family trees. After poring over birth, marriage and census records she uncovered a goldmine of interesting connections including American presidents, British royalty and Walt Disney himself. Dig far enough and one can find Mayflower passengers and even connections to Charlemagne.

This got me thinking about my own family history. I sat down and sketched a quick tree, going back to the last generation where I knew anything at all: my great-grandparents. It soon became apparent that I know precious little about those people. I never met any of them that I can recall. Only one of their lifetimes intersected with mine – a Ukranian great grandmother on my mom’s side of tree – and she passed away before my second birthday. Through my parents I’ve managed to fill in many of the blanks including maiden names, years and countries of birth, and years of death. But beyond these basic facts, I know absolutely nothing.

And I find it fascinating to stare at these names sketched in pencil on a sheet of paper and envision each name belonging to an actual, complex human being, someone who lead a full life and went on to have children of their own. Who were these people? They had childhoods and favourite foods, personality traits and physical attributes, and yet I know nothing. Consider Annie Lipinski. She was my great-grandmother and all I know is that she was born in the Ukraine and married a Polish man by the name of Mike Worobetz. But who was she as a person? What was her life like? What was she like at my age? How did she meet my great-grandfather?

And, whatever happened to her many siblings? I’m fairly certain none of my great-grandparents were from single-child families. So all these faceless names are themselves branches of trees in familes that often included five or more children, many of whom went on to marry and have children of their own. Assuming a conservative estimate of three siblings per great-grandparent (since I haven’t yet organized the actual numbers) that’s 32 different individuals who may have headed their own families and created lines of countless people to whom I share quite close family ties, all things considered; direct family ties. And yet I don’t know any of these people. And this is only four generations. These eight great-grandparents obviously had parents of their own – sixteen different people who are my great-great grandparents, and I don’t even know their names. And those 16 people had parents and likely siblings of their own – and on, and on, and on.

Within four generations I’m directly descended from people who spent most of their lives in at least five different countries, speaking five different languages (none of which are English) and leading lives that I can’t even begin to comprehend. These people exist in my genes, in my DNA.

Just four generations and their lives are reduced to nothing but names and dates sketched in pencil on a sheet of paper. And in four generations hence, I’m sure nothing will have changed.