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Do you know your family history? I never really thought much about it until I had kids. My children have a rich and diverse cultural history. Their roots come from all over the world, from France to England, Germany and Spain, China and the Philippines. I’m in the process of putting together a family tree for Michael and Christina, so they can learn about both of our families when they are older.

My husband’s family is proud of their history. I’ve listened to the stories of the Dameron clan every time we visit his grandmother. According to family tradition, this particular branch of the tree can trace their ancestry to two brothers who emigrated from France to Virginia in the 1600’s. They came with their wives, their servants and all of their goods and animals. There have been members of the family in the Revolutionary War, in the Civil War (Confederate and proud of it, too LOL) in both World Wars, Vietnam. One distant relative married into Robert E. Lee’s family; another one was a prisoner in Andersonville. There have been both heroes and rogues in the family tree.

Although we know quite a bit about my husband’s side of the family, mine is still rather mysterious. It’s difficult to trace your roots when they’re in a country halfway around the world. Both of my parents come from the Philippines and have Filipino, Spanish and Chinese blood. My father lived in a fishing village; he told me he would be out with the boats all night with his father and the other men, then come into shore in the morning with the night’s catch. Dad was “an average student…he had one notebook all through high school, and just wrote really small.” He never tasted cow’s milk until he joined the US Navy.

According to him, his mother (my grandmother, Michael and Christina’s great-grandmother) was NOT a woman to be trifled with. She called him home for dinner, but Dad stubbornly stayed with his friends. So she went to the corner market where they all hung out, with a bolo (a machete) in hand and swung the bolo in front of Dad, burying the point in the wooden table in front of him. Dad got the point and meekly followed her home. (Now I don’t advertise this as a method of getting your kids’ attention. It was obviously a different time, then.)

My mother came from a well-to-do family; her father was the police chief of their city. She talks very little about her childhood or her teenage years. I accidentally found out she had played the violin when I found some music with her maiden name on it. My sister owns a picture of Mom in a beautiful dress and her hair done up in a beehive hair-do. Mom was sixteen and had the photo taken for her debu, a coming-of-age party, similar to the Spanish quincenera. What did she do as a child? How did she get along with her 12 brothers and sisters? I don’t know.

Unlike my husband, my knowledge spans only two generations. I’m determined to find more stories and record them for my children, for their children’s children. There is a saying, “They are not dead, as long as we remember them.” To preserve our past is to keep a link to our future.

[tags]family, history, research, teaching, sharing, heritage, ancestors[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by mamamusings, under a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved