Going Way Back

I'm working on the next article I will do for the paper I work for.

My column is entitled "The Good Ole Days".

I decided to see how far back my roots go in this county.

Not counting my Cherokee ancestors, I can go back eight generations in some branches, five in some and some I can't go back further than four because I just don't know.

There are more last names than you can shake a stick at, and if you've been living here for more than two generations, chances are you are my kin.

I can't help it, stop whining. You know you can't pick your relatives.

Most of my blood is Scots, Irish, Cherokee, English and one great-great-great grandmother who was Dutch.

It looks like the white part of my kin either came to this country and settled for a short time in Virginia or North Carolina before journeying on down to Georgia and mixing with Cherokee.

The weird thing is, none of these people, save my grandparents and one set of great-grandparents, mean anything to me.

I never knew them, they never knew me.

Isn't it strange to think that family goes back until there was only one family to start with? And that we are all related eventually?

I know all of them had some kind of influence on me genetically. Some only a teeny tiny bit by the time it all watered down to me.

My mother never has cared about her kin past her grandparents, she isn't interested in it at all.

I never was either, much, except for the Cherokee part, and that was only because Daddy was so proud of it.

But then one day I got this call saying I needed to prove how much Cherokee I had in me so the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D. C. could approve my baby coming home to us.

You bet I got interested quickly.  It sorta stuck, especially when I found out I sit on land that was owned by a great-great-great-grandfather many years ago.

It's mostly fun for me, but it doesn't mean a lot when it comes to who I am.

Because I am God's child. I have His blood now.

I don't understand that, how it happens, why He deemed it necessary.

All I know is I know.

And that's all I need to know.