Not a word.

Unfortunately, no.( not recent history, anyway)
When my husband and I researched our family trees/DNA, much of his family history had been written about in history books that we learned from in school. I got Winston Churchill,—I like that—but his family tree blew me away.
They came to Jamestown from England.Then the history goes way back from there.
Strange and fascinating.

On top or so many projects I have on the go is intermittent writings of relatives past that I keep on file, in order to compile and place in chronological order of events and self publish for the family.

One in particular is about my late father who at age 17 years old born of a family of boxers and was trained by his uncle went into the boxing ring and faced a Professional and in the first six to 10 seconds my dad knocked him out cold….thus his Boxing career took off.

Later as we were told this story my older brothers would tease my father that maybe he was so scared that he was pumped up with adrenaline that he waited for an inopportune moment and knocked out his opponent?

My brothers used this statement to get the point out..” Oh look over there” then he hit him…LOL we laughed so much thinking that this was the case, but my dad was pissed off that one would think that happened like that.

Well, no. Except for my immediate family. My kids. I have stories galore written down.

No real story written down, but I learn a bunch of stuff in a very unlikely place: the graveyard. My country has a tradition of going to the ancestors’ graves at New Year, and a lot of things about my ancestors come from those visits. Most of the time the adults are so tired of doing the chores around that they just try to finish things as quickly as possible, but occasionally my grandma does talk a little about the long gone ancestors while we are resting next to the tomb. Most of the stories are very subjective though. From what I can gather, grandpa’s mom died very young after giving birth to a lot of kids, and there was no picture of her so the only thing left was some Chinese verse I can’t understand. And there was this woman who didn’t seem to belong to the family tree, but was adopted as a concubine and she stood out because she was exceptionally intelligent.

I also managed to ask about the early day of the family tree. Apparently my family tree dated back to a small-time soldier who fought in a famous revolution. Then he went to the Central part of the country, and that’s about it. Not too interesting in my opinion…

My maternal grandmother’s parents met because of a wartime request: Hitler asked all unmarried women to write kind letters to bachelor soldiers. The two hit it off, apparently, and married when the war was over. They were a very happy couple.

It’s unsettling to think that without the nazi era, I probably wouldn’t be alive.

The dysfunction on my dad’s side probably goes back to a little refugee girl from Ireland. She was adopted by a German family, but was not treated well. Her difficult past made her into a very hard woman, and as an adult she was harsh with her own children. One of her kids went on to become my paternal grandfather. Maybe his difficult childhood motivated him to become an advocate for children? He founded a Democratic School, which children in my family still go to. That’s had a big effect on everyone.