Hi guys, the last week’s research has been fairly quiet, but since I currently need to catch up on the first couple of weeks of research, from before I decided to blog about it, this works, right?
Okay, so the first tree I did, I found all sorts of strange things, like passengers of the Mayflower [which I guess isn’t -too- weird, for that small bit of English & Irish, which in my case is more like English and Scottish]. So, in case I was getting things confused on the tree, I decided to switch to working on a tree that is just direct ancestors. I do eventually want to find out all my relatives, but when one side of a tree looks like a metro area phone book? Yeah, too confusing for now.
So, I start just filling in my new tree using hints on ancestry and I’m working back and forth, and I’m working on English/Scottish ancestry, you know, the part I didn’t know I -had- until a few weeks ago. Yeah, that. So, I run into ‘Grey’, and I don’t think anything of it, which is weird, when it comes to it, one my favorite parts of history. Anyway, I notice one died on Tower Hill … Okay, I know what that means. But why did he lose his head? So I keep tracing up. And this is where I’m like WTF?!?! Because for most of the tree I’m trying to double check connections and even looking people up online because apparently I’ve hit the part of my tree that apparently has historical figures in it.
About the time that I hit having Henry the VII as a many times great grandfather, though, I’m convinced I made a wrong turn. Cool as that could be, or as distressing, and this is where I hit a major dilemma. There are two here. One, I want to go back as far as I can, but I also do not really want to be related to people responsible for innocent people dying because they can’t grow up and get along. Yeah, mutually exclusive, at least right now, maybe with time travel…
So, what does all this have to do with Rebecca? Okay, according to 23&me, my English/Scottish ancestor would likely fall in the 2nd to 4th great grandparent. In addition, looking at other family trees of people who are patently related to me have a problem. Some of them are wonderfully kept and detailed out, but have Rebecca as being a Bryant. Some of them have my 2nd great grandfather’s name wrong, but they have Rebecca as being a Brandt, or a Barndt. Yes, I’m well aware that names change spelling. But this seems to be where things get weird.
See, the people those well done charts show as Rebecca’s parents were people of note in Massachusetts; her supposed father was worth a million in the beginning of the 1800s. We’re talking serious wealth. Her supposed mother was the daughter of one of the big scholars of the times. Rebecca is put down as being born in 1804, her parents didn’t get married until 1807, and there is NO record of her as their daughter.
And this is where my dad’s notes come into play. When he died in 2000, my mom gave me his box of genealogy stuff because she had no interest in any of it, so it came to me. Stupid me, I really hadn’t looked in it since he died, and my computer long ago corrupted the FTW file. He was actually trained in this stuff [I found all that in the box too]. He has her as Rebecca Brandt. And this is where it gets weird.
See, I supposedly have at least one full blooded English ancestor [or scottish] in that region of my tree; somewhere at the 2nd to 4th. Brandt looks like a German name, which is what my dad figured. But Rebecca pretty much deadends there, but she isn’t showing up as a recorded member of the Bryant family either.
And that’s where the puzzle comes in. I have -no- other candidates for a British Isles ancestor in that generation, none. My mom’s side is a wash, I am 99.99% certain of that. Her side of the tree might dead end a whole lot soon, for now, but its all because the trail ends in Eastern Europe. My dad’s side is almost entirely German descent, so, its makes it tricky.
Anyways, this is one mystery that is going to be come back to later. Might as well work on less troublesome branches for now. But I’ve been asking myself; do I just not want to face the truth, and if so, what exactly IS the truth here.