VACATION UPDATE….Yes, I’m back. Actually, I was back on Friday, but I spent the weekend catching up on filing and research, so I didn’t have any time for blogging.
And how was the trip? Not bad from a genealogy hobby point of view. We discovered a few new ancestors and learned quite a bit more about their lives in Denver around the turn of the century. Quite enlightening.
I won’t bore you with any more about that, other than to remark that it’s amusing how frequently families have legends about being related to famous people. My family, for example, has long had the vague idea that we are related to Mary Queen of Scots, and when I started doing genealogy a couple of years ago I discovered that my great-grandmother’s name was, in fact, Mary Stuart, and if you trace her line back far enough and make about half a dozen heroic assumptions, it’s possible that she really is descended from an illegitimate child of James V and thus tangentially related to the unlucky Mary herself. But probably not.
In Denver we read through some stuff about a relative via marriage named William Smith. William was originally from Aberdeen, so naturally it turns out that his family legend is that he’s descended from the economist Adam Smith. Heck, they’re both from Scotland and they’re both named Smith! What more do you need?
Still, I suppose it’s harmless, and nowhere near as bad as the friend of my mother’s who insists that she can trace her family tree back to Jesus….
