Scottish, English, Cherokee...oh my!

Genealogy and the discovery of Ancestry.com, that's what happened.  Researching family history has been a fleeting hobby over the years so I had a five generation head start - including full names, birth and death information - which has made it fairly simple.  Yes, it's simple, but also ridiculously time consuming.  I'm either a super star researcher or my knack for solving puzzles translates to this kind of stuff, because I kicked this family tree's ass.  That, and I have to thank the Mormon's for keeping meticulous genealogical records.  Big ups to the Mormons!



We'd always assumed Kennedy was Irish.  Ah...no.  On the maternal side, the Kennedy branch resulted in Scottish Royalty with Robert Bruce I, the King of Scotland (Robert the Bruce - remember that for a minute), and another branch led me straight to Edward the III, the KING OF EFFIN' ENGLAND, then Edward II, Edward I (also known as The Hammer and Longshanks).  You don't have to know English/Scottish History to sort this out, but if you ever saw Mel Gibson's, Braveheart, you'll have the gist of it.  Robert the Bruce and Longshanks were on opposite sides of the big battles at Stirling Bridge and Fallkirk with William Wallace stuck fighting smack in the middle between them.  Robert eventually won the Scottish crown and things got a whole lot worse.  In that huge cornerstone chunk of Scottish/English history, our bloodline was on both sides of conflict, not only peripherally, but at the epicenter. 

Silly Tim at the Robert the Bruce statue at
Stirling Castle, Stirling, Scotland 2007 -
I wish I'd known then what I know now
about the family history

Toss in William the Conqueror in there and Phillip of France, a step back into the Scottish Royalty pool and that's about as far out I looked and as royal as it gets.  Crazy.  The Smith line on the maternal side led me to Cherokee.  So far so good, Royalty and Cherokee.  Stone led me to early colonists and the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Paternal Thompson (Granny Bob) goes straight to Wales and then staunchly lies Scotland, while paternal Taylor (Granny Bob) led me to a Civil War soldier or two, a Civil War POW, to early colonists and eventually France aristocracy.  Ancestry.com has census data, military draft/registration info, and lots of other historical documents that are just plain cool to read and attach to your tree.  So far I've gone back to the early 1200's on some branches, early 1600's on others and have been thrilled to bits to find each new connection.  I've had so much fun doing this and even more fun sharing it with Bob, Tara and extended family but holy hell, it's time to get back to work on this book stuff. 

Maybe this triple dose of Scot is what draws me to the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon and makes me love Jamie Fraser so fiercely.  I digress...probably shouldn't even get started on Jamie, should I?  I do love a man in a kilt.   

I'll leave you to ponder my new royal, Cherokee name: Her Royal Highness Micha Nanokachakee Stone.  Distracto girl out.  Serious book-writing girl will be back next week.  Promise.