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 . . . .