I love long weekends. Heck, I love short ones, too. But this Thanksgiving has been awesome! I feel refreshed, recharged, rejuvenated, and just overall re-done. Well, mostly. Enough to get me through to Christmas, anyway.
But I took on a new task this weekend. I have started researching my ancestry. I was watching one of the thousands of documentaries on television about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock and the first Thanksgiving (which was actually just the harvest feast that they always had) and all the other events that are focused on this time of year. This particular show spent alot of time talking about the Mayflower Compact. To refresh your history-based memory, this was the document that the Pilgrims wrote as their "purpose statement" so to speak.
The first thing about the Mayflower Compact that struck me was the reason they gave for undertaking the journey. It says:
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these present solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid....
This is just an excerpt but click here if you want to read it all.
So, first of all, their Tom-Tom needs calibrating. They didn't quite end up in Virginia. But, hey, close enough when you're out of food, water, and everybody's falling over dead. Second, they paid proper tribute to the king (King James, yeah that one) and declared that what they were doing was partly for the honor of "king and country." That's funny to me since I've always been taught that they were running from an oppressive, tyrant king in order to save their religious beliefs from extinction. We'll talk more about King James in a future post, when I feel like tearing down the train of thought that says he was practically a saint because he ordered a Bible translation and was immortalized because of it.
*Disclaimer --No problem here with the KJV, just with the attitude that it's the only real and true translation.
Moving on. What fascinates me the most is the line above that I've highlighted. According to their own words, they weren't merely trying to rescue their faith. They weren't trying to preserve their faith. They were trying to advance their faith. I would imagine that all of the signers of this document would be appalled if they saw all of the corruption and idiocies carried out in the name of religious freedom. If I understand this document correctly, the Pilgrims weren't looking for a place to establish different churches and faiths, where people were free to fabricate any god, or gods, that suited them. They undertook this impossible journey for God's glory and to further the Christian faith. No room for interpretation there.
Now, back to the part about my ancestry. The very first signer of the Mayflower Compact was a man named John Carver. He was also the first governor of the Plymouth colony and was instrumental in organizing the voyage in the first place. How did that information escape me for the better part of thirty years? No idea. But when I heard his name the other day, I couldn't help but wonder. I doubt that there is any relation but all of this caused me to question just who I do come from. So, I started looking. And yes, smart alecks, my tree does fork.
No real progress, yet. I'm still gathering information on the Carver side. Grandmother Carver's side (her mother's maiden name was Wolfe) is the Cherokee bloodline so I don't expect that to be traceable for too many generations just because of the lack of record keeping.
On my mother's side, I've had some great success. My great-grandmother's maiden name was Nipper and I've actually followed that line back to 1538, tentatively. I say that because I'm still trying to verify each person, their birth and death dates, census records, and each source and each record that I have found. I'm nearly 100% certain back to about the late 1600's. It's tedious work, y'all. But I have found out that those ancestors of mine came from Scotland. That makes sense because this area was heavily settled by Scottish immigrants in the pre-colonial years. But still, it's something I never knew about my family so that makes it very cool. If anyone has any Wallace's, Brannon's, Henderson's, or Hamilton's in their genealogy, I'll see you at the reunion next year.
And my mother is a Pressley (thankyouverymuch), so, I guess that explains my uncontrollable hip gyrations and upper lip twitch; not to mention the buttery smooth voice.
What can I say? I'm just a hunka, hunka burnin' love.
Have a great Monday. I gotta go buy a white, rhinestoned jump-suit.
