September 29th, 2011 -- In the beginning God created the South and called it good y'all...
So this is my first blog entry on a new blog. I had a Xanga blog for quite some time and probably still do, but I have not accessed it in longer than I can remember. It was filled with emotional rants in one form or another about women that had done me "wrong" in one way or the other. I guess I haven't posted anything to that blog in so long because there haven't been any girls doing me wrong lately. This isn't such a bad thing. It has left me a lot more time for self discovery and reflection. This time is increasingly appreciated because I have come to realize that life is too short to hold grudges and get bent out of shape over trivial things like matters of the heart. Perhaps matters of the heart aren't actually trivial, but the girls that cause me grief were. Well, most of them anyway.
This new blog is intended to be dedicated to discovering my family history. Since I was a child my grandmother instilled in me a curiosity about the soil in which my family tree has buried its roots. Some of these discoveries were some what expected, and some were not at all expected. Most of what I have discovered are sources of pride...2nd cousins with General Stonewall Jackson, and some I am not so proud of. My 4th great grandfather that moved from Western New York to South West Mississippi owned a number of slaves. This fact is not something I feel responsible for, because such history was not of my choosing. But I do feel connected to these things and the truth begs to be heard. I have come to realize that there are too many stories to tell and uncover, and my attempts at compiling the various discoveries uncovered from all the numerous stones of history simply leads me to more and more stones. Perhaps this is why genealogy is so appealing to someone like me. The subject plays to so many sides of my personality. There is history, geography, novelty, nostalgia, geography (yes, I typed geography twice) travel, reading, genetics, and the list goes on and on and on. Hopefully as my efforts progress I will begin to get better and better at uncovering the truth.
I suppose the best place to begin is in the South. The land not of my birth, but very much of my upbringing. Unfortunately I cannot claim to be born in the Southland. My parents had moved to California during the time of my grand entrance, but I realized what was going on immediately and within about three months of my arrival I convinced them that we should return to Mississippi where I spent the remainder of my childhood. That childhood was made possible by four wonderful families. Both of my grandfathers had the last name Wilson. (Cue inbred jokes...I can assure you though, my families are not related while they have been in North America) My father's mother had the last name Darden, and my mother's mother had the last name Cassels. For the most part all my family history has Southern roots. Places like Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Kentucky leave little doubt about my heritage. The important thing though is that I feel connected to the south and especially Mississippi. I know I am a Mississippian and can say this with a sense of pride that doesn't correlate to emotions that are easily given explanation to those unfamiliar. The stories of Amite County heard from my grandmother at such a young age always bring a smile to my face. I feel fortunate to have developed such a sense of place. But this is only one chapter of the story. After digging in about my other grandmother's family I discovered that my family has roots in Coosa County Alabama. This was quite the surprise. The Dardens have been in Coosa County for over 150 years and my Great Grandfather's mother's family, the Carlisles have been there equally as long. Mississippi AND Alabama? It doesn't get any more southern than that I don't believe.
What consumes me most at this point is a desire to document and share the places and hopefully the stories and the history of these individuals that have gone before me. The generation of my grandparents is slowly but surely leaving us without a source of first hand knowledge about those that have gone before so it is only those things which have been written down and photographed that lead me to the discoveries about the folks from the past. The good news is that so many others keep the flame burning and have resources to share. www.ancestry.com has been a tremendous resource and opened up a world of information about people, places and stories from my family history that I never dreamed were part of my past. This has lead my thoughts to draw down on attempting to make a series of documentaries based on my research. Until now, I think I have been concerned with putting as many pieces of the puzzle together as possible, and while this has been fruitful I have started to realize that I have almost been treating my ancestors more like numbers and words on a page instead of actual people with faces and stories. Moving forward I plan on discontinuing a lot of this sort of research and focusing instead on the real history. I want to know about the places where they lived. I want to know why they called Coosa County, or New Orleans, or Houston or New York state home. This means understanding those places and spending time assimilating the truth about my ancestors. I hope I can pull it off. Each stone is an opportunity to tell another story. A multitude of stories that are all worth sharing...
