Friday, April 9, 2010

The Ancestor Approved Award

My thanks to Jean Wilcox Hibben (the Circlemending blog), Terri O'Connell (the Finding Our Ancestors blog) and Tim Abbott (the Walking the Berkshires blog) for naming me and Genea-Musings as a winner of the Ancestor Approved Award:



As a recipient of this award, I’m supposed to list ten things I have learned about any of my ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened me and pass along the award to ten other bloggers whom I feel are doing their ancestors proud.

My ten surprising, humbling and enlightening things (pretty much random based on my memory...):

* Humbled by the courage of my immigrant ancestors to colonial America in the 17th century, e.g., the Pilgrims to Plymouth. Travel by sailing ship was no picnic and, in some cases, they had no real clue where they would land and what they would have to do to survive.

* Enlightened by the building of a stable society in colonial New England, gradually conquering the wilderness to form towns with representative government (albeit by men only).

* Humbled by the enduring effort of my ancestral families to do the very best they could with the education, skills and resources they had, with only a few notable exceptions.

* Surprised that so many of my colonial ancestors lived into their 70s, 80s and 90s; but not that surprised once you figure out that this is survival of the fittest! Thank goodness for that!

* Surprised (long ago) to find that I have at least six Mayflower 1620 passengers in my ancestry - William White, Susanna (--?--) White, Richard Warren, George Soule, Francis Cooke and John Cooke. There may be several more if I ever figure out my Elizabeth Horton Dill ancestry.

* Surprised (long ago) to find links to royal connections through New England colonial ancestors Mary (Gye) Maverick, Olive (Welby) Farwell, Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet, Elizabeth (Blossom) FitzRandolph and perhaps several others. All women, for some reason!

* Enlightened by family histories written by many genealogists from the 19th century who slogged through voluminous and barely legible New England town records to find genealogy information, Gustave Anjou fakers notwithstanding. Sure, some are poorly done, but many were well done and foundational.

* Surprised that I found that Devier J. Smith was adopted by Ranslow and Mary (Bell) Smith - his birth surname was Lamphear. I wonder how many other adoption surprises there are in my ancestry?

* Enlightened by all of the Smith and Carringer family papers, photographs and artifacts that were saved by four generations - my research task has been made infinitely easier, and more interesting, by all of the stuff! Thank you Abigail (Vaux) Smith, Della (Smith) Carringer, Lyle L. Carringer and Betty (Carringer) Seaver for being packrats!

* Surprised that my parents, born 2,500 miles apart, were distant cousins several times over - most recent common ancestors were Joseph and Rose (Allen) Holloway and Timothy and Melatiah (Clark) Hamant.

* Enlightened and humbled by the knowledge and skills of the genealogists and family historians that contribute to the world of genealogy research. There are "experts" on every subject, it seems, and we all benefit from their scholarship and works.

I came to this award fairly late, and have not kept score of who has received it or not. Rather than naming ten genea-bloggers who might already have received it, I nominate any genea-blogger who believes that they have earned it to accept it from me. Please let me know who you are!

Thank you to Jean, Terri and Tim for the award - please go visit their blogs and read their surprising, enlightening and humbling things.

Does anybody know who the lady in the award picture above is? And who started this award?

UPDATE: Thank you, Denise, for the comment that the originator of this award was Leslie Ann Ballou at Ancestors Live Here - http://ancestorslivehere.blogspot.com/2010/03/ancestor-badge.html.

I wondered how it got to me - so I checked thel ine back from Tim Abbott:

* Tim Abbott on Walking the Berkshires
* Heather Rojo on Nutfield Genealogy (three nominations, I picked one)
* Carol at Reflections from the Fence (three nominations, I picked one)
* Anne (TennLady) at Gene Notes
* Michelle Goodrum at The Turning of Generations
* Kelly at Family History Fun
* Denise Levenick at The Family Curator
* Cyndi (Texicanwife) at Mountain Genealogist
* Dianne Ford at Finding Josephine
* Leslie Ann Ballou at Ancestors Live Here.

That's quite a genealogy line in itself! I'm now following all of these folks.

4 comments:

Family Curator said...

Congrats Randy. I posted about this award recently. I did a little digging (ie. “googling”) and discovered that the award was initiated by Leslie Ann Ballou at Ancestors Live Here http://ancestorslivehere.blogspot.com/2010/03/ancestor-badge.html just a few days ago, 29 March 2010 to recognize blogs she appreciated and enjoyed.

Denise

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

Congrats, Randy, on your sleuthing to find the lineage of this award. I'm surprised to see that this all started less than a month ago, but I guess it's progression through the genealogy community has been exponential, but like our family trees!

Leslie Ann said...

Hi Randy,Just wanted to let you know that the woman in the picture of the Ancestor Approved award is my 3rd great-grandmother Mary Edwards White Cannon Taylor. You can read a little about her here: http://lostmementos.blogspot.com/2010/04/ancestor-approved-award.html

And I see that you mentioned Joseph and Rose (Allen) Holloway in your ten things you learned about your ancestors. They are my 10th great-grandparents. So does that mean I can call you cousin?

Martin said...

http://mhollick.typepad.com/slovakyankee/2010/04/ancestor-approved.html