OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

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Tony Hoskins

OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Tony Hoskins » 30 mai 2006 19:00:02

Earlier discussion this month prompts me yet again to briefly wander
OT.

Paraphrasing Mr. S.: "What's in an ancestor? That which we call an
ancestor, however unroyal, undistinguished, or even unsavory, would
smell as sweet."

Many times over the years people have come to see me at the library,
saying things like, "I want to find a Mayflower [or other "desirable"
type] ancestor." It is of course impossible to conjure up ancestors to
order. We are all dealt different ancestral hands, and the fun of it is
(or at least ought to be) the variety, the range, and the differences.
Some people have traced more royal lines, some many American
Revolutionary, or even "Salem witch" lines. It is not however a
competition - and no glory or contumely should inhere in what we find or
do not find!

Long suffering myself from what began to seem to me to be far too many
New England and upstate New York farmers and ministers (not to mention
English clergymen) of rather monotonous probity and rectitude, I was
delighted - relatively late in the game - to get down to brass tacks
with the full picture on my 5 greats (agnate) grandfather, Ninian
Hoskinson / Hoskins (1747-aft 1808).

Talking with a distant cousin in Tennessee a few years ago, I lamented
as yet not finding a death record or place for the highly-documentedly
obstreperous "Ning". My cousin said, "The last reference to Ning Hoskins
I have found was a court order in 1808, for the Sheriff of Claiborne
County, Tennessee to give Ninian Hoskins 40 lashes for pig stealing."

For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"

Tony



Anthony Hoskins
History, Genealogy and Archives Librarian
History and Genealogy Library
Sonoma County Library
3rd and E Streets
Santa Rosa, California 95404

707/545-0831, ext. 562

John Brandon

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av John Brandon » 30 mai 2006 19:00:03

Wow, such egalitarian affirmations. Notice that these are the two on
this list with the largest number of gateways ... (excepting the law
firm of Brice-McAdoo-Claggett) ...

Hal Bradley

RE: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Hal Bradley » 30 mai 2006 19:17:02

snip
For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Hal Bradley
Tony



Anthony Hoskins
History, Genealogy and Archives Librarian
History and Genealogy Library
Sonoma County Library
3rd and E Streets
Santa Rosa, California 95404

707/545-0831, ext. 562

norenxaq

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av norenxaq » 31 mai 2006 01:52:01

Tony Hoskins wrote:

Earlier discussion this month prompts me yet again to briefly wander
OT.

Paraphrasing Mr. S.: "What's in an ancestor? That which we call an
ancestor, however unroyal, undistinguished, or even unsavory, would
smell as sweet."

Many times over the years people have come to see me at the library,
saying things like, "I want to find a Mayflower [or other "desirable"
type] ancestor." It is of course impossible to conjure up ancestors to
order. We are all dealt different ancestral hands, and the fun of it is
(or at least ought to be) the variety, the range, and the differences.
Some people have traced more royal lines, some many American
Revolutionary, or even "Salem witch" lines. It is not however a
competition - and no glory or contumely should inhere in what we find or
do not find!



and yet some think of it as such. perhaps not competition as much as
one-upsmanship

Long suffering myself from what began to seem to me to be far too many
New England and upstate New York farmers and ministers (not to mention
English clergymen) of rather monotonous probity and rectitude, I was
delighted - relatively late in the game - to get down to brass tacks
with the full picture on my 5 greats (agnate) grandfather, Ninian
Hoskinson / Hoskins (1747-aft 1808).

Talking with a distant cousin in Tennessee a few years ago, I lamented
as yet not finding a death record or place for the highly-documentedly
obstreperous "Ning". My cousin said, "The last reference to Ning Hoskins
I have found was a court order in 1808, for the Sheriff of Claiborne
County, Tennessee to give Ninian Hoskins 40 lashes for pig stealing."

For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"

Tony



and interesting what we find regardless of what they did

Merilyn Pedrick

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Merilyn Pedrick » 31 mai 2006 03:03:02

Hear hear Tony!
My aunt was horrified a few years ago when I found that one of our ancestors
Elizabeth Needham, was a convict brought out on the First Fleet to
Australia in 1788. (She had been convicted of stealing two pairs of silk
stockings). She eventually married as her third husband, a convict from the
Second Fleet, our ancestor, John Driver, who, at the age of 14 had been
convicted of stealing a silver watch.
Like you, I was heartily sick of all the worthy Presbyterian ministers and
their like, and was overjoyed to find someone with somewhat more colour!
It had taken many years to unearth this interesting woman, since the
Australian families of convicts went to great lengths to hide their origins.
Elizabeth was a woman of great character, and owned a large chunk of Sydney
by the time she died in 1825.
Merilyn Pedrick

-------Original Message-------

From: Tony Hoskins
Date: 05/31/06 02:33:15
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Earlier discussion this month prompts me yet again to briefly wander
OT.

Paraphrasing Mr. S.: "What's in an ancestor? That which we call an
ancestor, however unroyal, undistinguished, or even unsavory, would
smell as sweet."

Many times over the years people have come to see me at the library,
saying things like, "I want to find a Mayflower [or other "desirable"
type] ancestor." It is of course impossible to conjure up ancestors to
order. We are all dealt different ancestral hands, and the fun of it is
(or at least ought to be) the variety, the range, and the differences.
Some people have traced more royal lines, some many American
Revolutionary, or even "Salem witch" lines. It is not however a
competition - and no glory or contumely should inhere in what we find or
do not find!

Long suffering myself from what began to seem to me to be far too many
New England and upstate New York farmers and ministers (not to mention
English clergymen) of rather monotonous probity and rectitude, I was
delighted - relatively late in the game - to get down to brass tacks
with the full picture on my 5 greats (agnate) grandfather, Ninian
Hoskinson / Hoskins (1747-aft 1808).

Talking with a distant cousin in Tennessee a few years ago, I lamented
as yet not finding a death record or place for the highly-documentedly
obstreperous "Ning". My cousin said, "The last reference to Ning Hoskins
I have found was a court order in 1808, for the Sheriff of Claiborne
County, Tennessee to give Ninian Hoskins 40 lashes for pig stealing."

For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"

Tony



Anthony Hoskins
History, Genealogy and Archives Librarian
History and Genealogy Library
Sonoma County Library
3rd and E Streets
Santa Rosa, California 95404

707/545-0831, ext. 562

Nathaniel Taylor

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Nathaniel Taylor » 31 mai 2006 03:31:00

In article <s47c1739.080@CENTRAL_SVR2>,
hoskins@sonoma.lib.ca.us ("Tony Hoskins") wrote:

... equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer ...

My mother's male-line New England immigrant ancestor became an object
lesson on the evils of drunknenness:

"June 5, 1666, one Tucker, a tailor, who belonged to the Isles of
Shoals, being then at the point in the Piscataqua River, was so drunk in
the Lecture time, that, pulling off his clothes, he ran into the water,
cursing and swearing, and was drowned."

(Rev. William Hubbard (d. 1704), _A general history of New England, from
the discovery to MDCLXXX_, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 2, v. 5-6, Boston, 1848), 2:646.)

Nat Taylor

a genealogist's sketchbook:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/

my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltay ... rantsa.htm

roger.tansey@post.harvard

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av roger.tansey@post.harvard » 31 mai 2006 05:08:00

Indeed. It was fun to know I was descended from Gov. William Bradford
of Plymouth Colony. But it was more fun to discover a descent from
John Billington - who was sentenced to death by Bradford for committing
the first murder!

:-)

Roger

Gjest

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Gjest » 31 mai 2006 07:04:13

"Tony Hoskins" wrote:
For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"


Also there is the difference over time in how one's status is
perceived. Ancestors may be well off or well known for reasons that,
today, would be regarded negatively. For instance, one
great-great-grandfather used water cannons to blast apart the beautiful
hills of the Sierra Nevada during the GOld Rush; another
great-great-grandfather left his plantation on Carriacou angrily when
Britain forced him to give up his slaves. Both of these men were
honorable in their day but today.... since I have other ancestors who
were native to these places and were victims of such men as these, I
used these examples openly in my classroom while teaching Native
American Studies at our local college. It helped the students avoid the
pitfall of becoming racially polarized - both native and white. Best,
Bronwen

Ford Mommaerts-Browne

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Ford Mommaerts-Browne » 31 mai 2006 08:08:02

----- Original Message -----
From: "norenxaq" <norenxaq@san.rr.com>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"


| Tony Hoskins wrote:
|
| >Earlier discussion this month prompts me yet again to briefly wander
| >OT.
| >
| >Paraphrasing Mr. S.: "What's in an ancestor? That which we call an
| >ancestor, however unroyal, undistinguished, or even unsavory, would
| >smell as sweet."
| >
| >Many times over the years people have come to see me at the library,
| >saying things like, "I want to find a Mayflower [or other "desirable"
| >type] ancestor." It is of course impossible to conjure up ancestors to
| >order. We are all dealt different ancestral hands, and the fun of it is
| >(or at least ought to be) the variety, the range, and the differences.
| >Some people have traced more royal lines, some many American
| >Revolutionary, or even "Salem witch" lines. It is not however a
| >competition - and no glory or contumely should inhere in what we find or
| >do not find!
| >
| >
|
| and yet some think of it as such. perhaps not competition as much as
| one-upsmanship
|
| >Long suffering myself from what began to seem to me to be far too many
| >New England and upstate New York farmers and ministers (not to mention
| >English clergymen) of rather monotonous probity and rectitude, I was
| >delighted - relatively late in the game - to get down to brass tacks
| >with the full picture on my 5 greats (agnate) grandfather, Ninian
| >Hoskinson / Hoskins (1747-aft 1808).
| >
| >Talking with a distant cousin in Tennessee a few years ago, I lamented
| >as yet not finding a death record or place for the highly-documentedly
| >obstreperous "Ning". My cousin said, "The last reference to Ning Hoskins
| >I have found was a court order in 1808, for the Sheriff of Claiborne
| >County, Tennessee to give Ninian Hoskins 40 lashes for pig stealing."
| >
| >For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
| >ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
| >good!"
| >
| >Tony
| >
| >
| >
| and interesting what we find regardless of what they did
|


'It is, indeed, desirable to well-descended; but the glory belongs to our ancestors.'
-- Plutarch, Morals on the Training of Children

Ford Mommaerts-Browne

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Ford Mommaerts-Browne » 31 mai 2006 08:13:01

----- Original Message -----
From: "Merilyn Pedrick" <pedricks@ozemail.com.au>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"


| Hear hear Tony!
| My aunt was horrified a few years ago when I found that one of our ancestors
| Elizabeth Needham, was a convict brought out on the First Fleet to
| Australia in 1788. (She had been convicted of stealing two pairs of silk
| stockings). She eventually married as her third husband, a convict from the
| Second Fleet, our ancestor, John Driver, who, at the age of 14 had been
| convicted of stealing a silver watch.
| Like you, I was heartily sick of all the worthy Presbyterian ministers and
| their like, and was overjoyed to find someone with somewhat more colour!
| It had taken many years to unearth this interesting woman, since the
| Australian families of convicts went to great lengths to hide their origins.




'It seems I've heard this song, before.'





| Elizabeth was a woman of great character, and owned a large chunk of Sydney
| by the time she died in 1825.
| Merilyn Pedrick
|


Yes, my mother was distressed some years ago when I found indications of Jewish ancestry. Her sister was distraught when I found that our (romantic) 'Bohemian' ancestors were really German, living in the Sudetenland. The Jewish line turned out to be no more than 'indications'; and the Bohemians did turn up a couple of generations further back. But, I think that the point is seen.
Ford

Ford Mommaerts-Browne

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Ford Mommaerts-Browne » 31 mai 2006 08:17:01

----- Original Message -----
From: <roger.tansey@post.harvard.edu>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"


| Indeed. It was fun to know I was descended from Gov. William Bradford
| of Plymouth Colony. But it was more fun to discover a descent from
| John Billington - who was sentenced to death by Bradford for committing
| the first murder!
|
| :-)
|
| Roger


I thought that that was Cain!

Ford Mommaerts-Browne

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Ford Mommaerts-Browne » 31 mai 2006 08:18:01

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathaniel Taylor" <nathanieltaylor@earthlink.net>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11:31 PM
Subject: Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"


| In article <s47c1739.080@CENTRAL_SVR2>,
| hoskins@sonoma.lib.ca.us ("Tony Hoskins") wrote:
|
| > ... equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer ...
|
| My mother's male-line New England immigrant ancestor became an object
| lesson on the evils of drunknenness:
|
| "June 5, 1666, one Tucker, a tailor,


Interesting that he was a Tailor.



| who belonged to the Isles of
| Shoals, being then at the point in the Piscataqua River, was so drunk in
| the Lecture time, that, pulling off his clothes, he ran into the water,
| cursing and swearing, and was drowned."
|
| (Rev. William Hubbard (d. 1704), _A general history of New England, from
| the discovery to MDCLXXX_, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Collections of the
| Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 2, v. 5-6, Boston, 1848), 2:646.)
|
| Nat Taylor
|

I used to party with people like that!

John P. Ravilious

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av John P. Ravilious » 31 mai 2006 11:19:23

Dear Bronwen,

Thanks for making that (those) point(s).

I have an ancestor with two known wives, and children by
each. There is record (outside the 'mainstream' family information) of
another, older daughter who was evidently beloved by her father,
disliked by her father's favorite sister, married, died young in
childbirth and evidently never acknowledged by her father to her
younger half-siblings. A distant cousin of mine asked another (4th)
cousin about details of this individual, and hasn't been spoken to by
that other cousin ever since. Whatever the reason (illegitimacy,
possibly) it amazes me today that such a 'grievance' could carry down
some 200 years - but then we have Bosnia and 'the former Yugoslavia',
the Sudan, and innumerable other (and worse) examples. Perhaps I
should cease being amazed.

Cheers,

John


lostcooper@yahoo.com wrote:
"Tony Hoskins" wrote:
For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"


Also there is the difference over time in how one's status is
perceived. Ancestors may be well off or well known for reasons that,
today, would be regarded negatively. For instance, one
great-great-grandfather used water cannons to blast apart the beautiful
hills of the Sierra Nevada during the GOld Rush; another
great-great-grandfather left his plantation on Carriacou angrily when
Britain forced him to give up his slaves. Both of these men were
honorable in their day but today.... since I have other ancestors who
were native to these places and were victims of such men as these, I
used these examples openly in my classroom while teaching Native
American Studies at our local college. It helped the students avoid the
pitfall of becoming racially polarized - both native and white. Best,
Bronwen

Nathaniel Taylor

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Nathaniel Taylor » 31 mai 2006 16:00:57

From: <roger.tansey@post.harvard.edu
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

| Indeed. It was fun to know I was descended from Gov. William Bradford
| of Plymouth Colony. But it was more fun to discover a descent from
| John Billington - who was sentenced to death by Bradford for committing
| the first murder!

Speaking of early colonial 'undesirables': further off-topic, but has
anyone systematically looked into the connections and ancestry of those
convicted of bestial sodomy in 17th-century New England? Aside from
Thomas Granger, the teenager executed in 1642 for buggering a mare, a
cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey (!), and who has
descendants through a sister, there were two other teenage boys executed
in the 1640s (one at Salem, one at New Haven), for unnatural acts with
cattle. Kinship with them does not yet have the cachet of descent from
witchcraft victims, but maybe someone can start a trend?

Nat Taylor

a genealogist's sketchbook:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/

my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltay ... rantsa.htm

Doug McDonald

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Doug McDonald » 31 mai 2006 17:03:40

lostcooper@yahoo.com wrote:
another
great-great-grandfather left his plantation on Carriacou angrily when
Britain forced him to give up his slaves.

The state of his honor would have depended upon whether he
was FAIRLY COMPENSATED for the loss. One notes that in the
USA the slaveowners were deprived of their property without
any compensation whatsoever. If the North had offered full
and fair compensation for the loss of slaves, at the proper
time, as provided for in the Constitution of ths USA,
perhaps the War of Northern Aggression would never have
happended. Once it started, of course, the loss of the
slaves without fair compensation was a foregone conclusion,
except in the unlikely case that the South had won.

My ancestors suffered mightily, basically losing all their
property, because of this. They all eventually had to move
farther west to survive at all.

Doug MCDonald

John Brandon

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av John Brandon » 31 mai 2006 17:11:19

The state of his honor would have depended upon whether he
was FAIRLY COMPENSATED for the loss. One notes that in the
USA the slaveowners were deprived of their property without
any compensation whatsoever. If the North had offered full
and fair compensation for the loss of slaves, at the proper
time, as provided for in the Constitution of ths USA,
perhaps the War of Northern Aggression would never have
happended. Once it started, of course, the loss of the
slaves without fair compensation was a foregone conclusion,
except in the unlikely case that the South had won.

My ancestors suffered mightily, basically losing all their
property, because of this. They all eventually had to move
farther west to survive at all.

Oh lord. None of my Southern ancestors (half my ancestry) ever lived
any further west than the Charlotte, NC, area, and they managed to do
all right.

Doug McDonald

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Doug McDonald » 31 mai 2006 17:47:43

John Brandon wrote:

My ancestors suffered mightily, basically losing all their
property, because of this. They all eventually had to move
farther west to survive at all.

Oh lord. None of my Southern ancestors (half my ancestry) ever lived
any further west than the Charlotte, NC, area, and they managed to do
all right.


By the time of the War of Northern Aggression most of my
southern ancestors remaining in the Deep South were in
Alabama, a few in Tennessee. None were rich, though some of
their ancestors were. Only the one pair living in Missouri
were (relatively) unscathed by the War, and those because
they were not farmers. By "farther west" I of course mean
(west) Texas.

Yours apparently were luckier than mine.

Doug McDonald

John Brandon

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av John Brandon » 31 mai 2006 18:55:55

Yours apparently were luckier than mine.

Possibly, but think how reactionary it is to be fussing at this late
date about the loss of slaves ...!

Mary Jane Battaglia

Re: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"

Legg inn av Mary Jane Battaglia » 31 mai 2006 20:40:02

Tony,
You are so right!...and the fun lies in the search!!
mjbattaglia
placerville, CA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hal Bradley" <hw.bradley@verizon.net>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:16 AM
Subject: RE: OT (bigtime): "Ancestor Envy"


snip

For me royal/ancient, Mayflower, Revolutionary, Jamestown, etc.
ancestors take equal rank with Old Ning the Pig Stealer! "It's *all*
good!"

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Hal Bradley

Tony



Anthony Hoskins
History, Genealogy and Archives Librarian
History and Genealogy Library
Sonoma County Library
3rd and E Streets
Santa Rosa, California 95404

707/545-0831, ext. 562



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