Since beloved spouse was irritated that I was spending money monthly for ancestors.com and wasn't doing any regular research (though in all fairness, the amount was far less than he spends on golf and electronics), I decided to get back into chasing the squirrels in the family tree. The DNA thing got me started, though of course, I won't know much from that. Apparently DNA is sexist. We female folk have to pursue our mitochondrial DNA, whereas the males can pursue other types that go through the father's line. Given the history of naming the children in the families with the father's name, it's easy to see how pursuing the father's line would be more immediately beneficial. And to be honest, I've never especially cared for my mother's mother and her side of the family. But you take what you can get. Once I can get one of my brothers talked into doing the DNA swab, I'll get the male side. Meanwhile, the mother's side will show me the path across the Old World that those ancestors took to get here. I've always assumed (based on family chit-chat) that they were Irish and/or English.
Family chit-chat can lead one astray, however. I've always assumed that my grandfather (Dad's dad) had died young since my father was sent out to work at an early age. However, because Grandpa Benjamin Cockerham was married and widowed once prior to marrying Grandma Martha Jane Roberts, he was kind of old when he fathered his last set of children. He was 74 when he died. My father was 25, hardly a child. I suspect, though, that Grandpa was unable to do much hard work for the last ten years of his life. He was a farmer, and in those days, that was even more strenuous than it is now.
I also was under the impression that one of the grandfathers on my dad's side was married to a native American woman. Unless I'm chasing a squirrel that belongs to someone else's family tree, Grandpa Benjamin C's father seems to have been named John and his mother was named Sortiva. (How do you pronounce that? Like "sort of a"?) Grandpa Benjamin apparently was raised by his grandfather Marshall Jones (Sortiva's father?) after the deaths of his father, mother, and most of his siblings. That part is an assumption since I can't locate what happened to them and I find only that Marshall is a widower raising two grandchildren, Benjamin and Sarah. (My father had a sister named Sarah, but then, so did everyone else. Names do, though, tend to recur in families.) I find a record of a John Cockerham having been a Civil War Prisoner of War, exchanged at some point with a Union soldier and returned back to his Rebel side. I don't know if war, influenza, or some other cause was responsible for their deaths.
This is just too interesting. I can easily see adding this obsession to my long list of obsessions. Just the other day, a report on the news indicated that people who retire early tend to die early, but I don't think I would ever stop doing fun stuff (well, it's fun to me, at any rate) long enough to feel "retired."
When I was a newlywed and worked for the Ouachita Parish Public Library, I had to help out in the geneology room. At the time, I thought those old folks were total fools for spending so much money and time on family research. Now I guess I am one of those old folks. It could be worse. I could have taken up riverboat gambling instead. One day I may eat these words, but I have to say, for all my tendencies to get addicted to things, I will never be a gambler. That seems to be the most stupid waste of money imaginable. Even worse than golf and electronic gadgets!
Hubby has most recently spent nearly $200 on a TiVo memory/hard drive (at least, I think that's what it is). In case the regular TiVo won't save and store enough all by itself, he wants to be able to have hours and hours and hours of viewing ready for our golden years, perhaps. I've got news for you, my dear. I don't plan to spend retirement in front of the tv set.
Drastic tangent: We got about six to eight inches of snow between Friday noon and this morning. Most local Easter festivities were cancelled or postponed. Today the sun is shining brightly on the unsullied expanse of white, and I'm ready for it to all go away again. Give me the brown mud and grayed grass. I'm ready for warm weather. Dr. S.
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