My Great-Grandfather, Barney, celebrated his birthday on March 17th, and claimed to have been born in Dublin, Ireland. It's significantly more likely that he was born in Warka, Poland - on the outskirts of Warsaw. The dates of March 25th and April 14th also appear on some documents as his date of birth, but no birth records have been uncovered, so anything is possible. There may be some significance to the fact that there are 20 days between March 25th and April 14th. (12 days adjustment between the Gregorian and Julian calendar, and 8 days between birth and circumcision.) There are also 8 days between March 17th and March 25th.
After a holiday post in 2007, a friend introduced me to online genealogy, and the rest is family history.
Transylvania, Holland, Alsace, Poland, England, Germany, Lithuania and Texas all contain soil upon which ancestors dwelt; Farmers, beekeepers, shepherds, tailors, blacksmiths, salesmen, clergy, judges, and doctors.
As I research ancestral lines I discover some ancestors celebrated Hanuka, others Christmas, and still others the Green Corn Ceremony; Jewish, Methodist Episcopalian, Puritan, Christian Scientist, Mennonite, Choctaw, and Cherokee.
I shall never find the records for my distant ancestors who either came to this continent by crossing the Land Bridge, or originally emerged from the Nanih Waiya in Mississippi.
I delve through obituaries, microfilm depositories, internet databases; I interview relatives, and rummage through attics.
What I find doesn't alter who I am; It illuminates the divergent, yet still intersecting paths of my ancestors.
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