Hazerdous End To Finding Your Roots

Hazardous End To Finding Your Roots
By Anne Wycoff

When all is said and done, bragging about your ancestors may be hazardous to your psyche.
That I learned when I began a five-year process of piecing together my family tree with bits of information about my paternal grandfather. His mother had immigrated to California from Mexico. He had been in foster homes most of his life. At eighteen he had changed his name from Rivera (his mothers name) to Rivers.

A friend emailed me a link to the Latter-day Saints Genealogy web site. With, “Curiosity killed the cat, “ as my new mantra, I leaned close to my monitor and entered the data about my grandfather. I fantasized about my ancestors. Maybe they were founders of this country, inventors, scholars or politicians?
From a census taken sixty-three years ago, I learned about my grandfather’s birth parents. I had a surname for my great-grandfather. My great-grandmother also named him on my grandfather’s birth certificate. But I soon discovered my great-grandfather had remarried (or married) directly after my grandfather’s birth, so my great-grandparents were never married. The plot thickened.

I learned my great-grandfather had five more children after he remarried. One had a first name matching my grandfathers middle name. A coincidence? Probably not.
By this time, my bottom was numb, my fingers ached and my heart pounded as I raced through my lineage. My great-grandmother’s line had long since disappeared, but I continued to pursue the paternal side of my family tree. I found branches reaching from England, France and Portugal. I wove my way through the LDS links from Ellis Island to births, deaths and marriages in other countries.
And then, horrified, I stopped. At fifteen, Rosalia Marquesso Crappo had married some Frenchman fifteen years her senior. A gentleman by the name, Gerourd D’Manuar. Yep Crap and Manure. In shock, I pressed the print icon. Hard evidence mocked me. I hoped I made a wrong turn. I called my dad.
He roared with laughter.
“Oh honey, you have no idea,” he finally managed to say. Composing himself, he continued,
“Your Grandfather kept in touch with his father through the years.”
“Yes Dad, so what?” I wanted to get to the bottom of this.
A long bout of giggling ensued. My Dad had to catch his breath.
“Well, your Great, great-grandfather invented the first flush toilet.”
There ought to be a law, I thought. Our family crest was probably a knight sitting on a toilet bowl, holding a plunger as his scepter. Knights of the toilet bowl
“So how come I am not the Princess of Pooh?” I was hoping to flush some kind of restitution.
“Your great-grandfather did inherit the patent, but he sold it to some plumber and then lost the whole load in the great crash. It all went down the drain”
Yes, my Dad actually used the word’s load and drain. And here I am, the descendant of the inventor of the crapper. It could have been worse: My ancestor could have invented the enema.

In closing, I would say if you dare risk damaging your psyche, go to the LDS genealogy site at www.Ancestry.com.
Who knows? You may be the descendant of Major Joel Connolly, the first Chief Inspector of Sanitary Engineering.
©All Rights Reserved, Anne Wycoff, November 2006