Oh, Those Ancestors . . . .
Here’s a funny thing:
We’re all quite proud of our Border-reiving ancestors –
murderous, thieving scalawags that they were!
We’re proud, too, of a faintly possible, exceedingly sketchy connection with British royalty – let’s just not look too closely at the daily lives of said royalty.
The great grandmother who was married three days before her
baby was born, elicits a smirk and a chuckle from us.
The great-aunt who hanged herself on Christmas Eve is merely
a sad story, as is the poor aunt who lived with her brother all her life and
was termed a lunatic.
And then there’s our great-grandfather, the Orangeman. Is it
because he looks so stern and unyielding in the only picture we have of him; is
it because the Orange Order was so rigidly anti-Catholic and became so militant
about it; is it because he was an Ulster-Scot, one of those people who took their
homeland away from the native Irish? For whatever reason, I seem to be having a
struggle with great-grandpa George Elliott.
I’m trying to learn more about his background so that I can
like him better. I’ll let you know how that goes . . . .