I occasionally google myself to see if anything bizarre shows up on the list. I’ve gone from three pages to nine, with a lot of repetitions but only a few links totally unrelated. At least the one linking to my race time in a half-marathon is gone. Years ago I walked in a fundraiser, the only time I’ve ever walked that far without stopping. I’d be embarrassed if anyone from my past googled me and thought I could actually finish any part of a marathon.
One surprise today was a link to a PDF of part of my family’s genealogy. I know the basics, but having this document pop up in relation to my name was new.
My grandmother came from two branches of early white arrivals to what became Massachusetts. I want to try to trace her ancestry through the mothers since the odds of no woman in nearly 300 years getting pregnant by a man other than her husband, voluntarily or involuntarily, seem pretty slim.
But for now, I’ll assume that generations of Groziers and Hopkins brought my mother into the world, and then me. Our first Grozier ancestor on this continent, William, died September 28th, 1734 and was buried at Christ Church in Boston. Christ Church is the Old North Church, built in 1723 with the steeple used to broadcast “one if by land, two if by sea.” Stephen Hopkins, a Stranger, landed with the Pilgrims in 1620 and died in Plymouth in 1644. He’s always been a favorite of mine, because, if the story is true, he got into hot water with the Pilgrims for brewing beer on the Sabbath.
The genealogy notes where many of the men are buried, but often the resting place of the women is marked “unknown.”
It seems most of my ancestors before 1920 were buried in Plymouth, Boston or in the Old North Truro cemetery.
On the grave listing of the Truro cemetery I see many ancestral names. Which makes me sad because I don’t know exactly where my grandmother is buried. Somewhere in Connecticut. I haven’t been to Connecticut since I was 13.
But a casual internet search, lasting a few seconds, puts pins on the map of our family’s lives and deaths. Why do the long dead feel more real than the grandmother who made us fudge and had brown eyes?
