Some Thoughts on Genealogy

      Having spent several months delving into my familial origins many questions have been answered. Most of my ancestors hail from the British Isles. My great-great-grandparents Widener lived around the corner from my high school alma mater in the 1920s. A staggeringly large number of past generations lived and are buried within 30 miles of where I grew up. I learned that great-great-grandmother Tucker adjusted the soil composition with rusty metal fencing to change the colors of the hydrangea mopheads, and great-great-grandmother Tate stewed tomatoes in a huge vat in the backyard before canning them. Some kinfolk were upholders of the law, others frequently violated it.
      Yet many questions remain. Why did my great-great-great-grandfather Delamater, a physician and planter from New York, die at age 42 in Walton County, Georgia, leaving a wife, young son, and vast estate? Why did my great-great-great-grandparents Russell emigrate from England to Colorado in the 1870s? Why did their son George William Russell leave Colorado and come to Atlanta, and how did he meet his wife Lucile Lee Rogers, a girl from Montgomery, Alabama? How did my great-great-great-grandmother Sudie Bilbo, née Luckie, widowed at a young age with two children, have two more babies with no trace of a father? And is the rumor true that she is buried in an unmarked grave outside the churchyard? Some of these questions may be answered, but others will remain forever a mystery.

Always remember there was nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name.
—The Avett Brothers, “Murder in the City”

      Assembling one’s genealogy begins with names. They are the structure around and within which further information is situated, contextualized, compared, and verified. The surname identifies a family and links past and present, while the given name identifies an individual link in the chain. These names often disclose surprising revelations. For example, after I told Memaw (Charlotte Ann Brayton, née Williams) that her great-great-grandmother was Charlotte Ann Peers, née Pomfrey (1818-1881), the pieces fell into place, and she said knowingly, “So that’s why Mother always wanted to call me Charlotte Pomfrey, but [sisters] Betty and Jean convinced her not to.” Memaw’s sisters’ names also honor their ancestors: Betty Frances for their aunt Cora Frances Delamater and Jean Wycliff for their great-great-great-grandparents the Wickliffes.
      I discovered a remarkable uniformity of names in my paternal grandmother’s family. Each of Nana’s (Bettye Jane Widener, née Tate) four great-grandmothers was named some form of Jane: Mattie Jane Potter, Willantha Jane Rogers, Mary Jane Mayhew, and Rosella Jane Doster. Nana’s mother was Mary Jane Russell, and Nana continued the tradition with her daughter Debrajane. Then there are names that, rather than following tradition, seem to be newly invented. The strangest names tend to be the women’s, and the strangest of all include Cresserious Elizabeth Hancock (1822-90), who married my great-great-great-great-granduncle Robert Jackson McKown; Thermutis Mote (c. 1926-?), my first cousin twice-removed; and Caldawood “Woody” Tate (1890-?), my great-great-grandaunt. I find no obvious explanation or origin of “Cresserious” and “Caldawood,” but “Thermutis” was the name of Pharaoh’s daughter who found baby Moses afloat in the Nile.