My understanding as a child was that we were Irish. Way back when, one of the three Caldwell brothers came from Ireland and eventually Grandpa and Grandma Caldwell ended up in Pennsylvania. Once a year my heritage seemed relevant when we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day although no one was ever Catholic to my knowledge.
But recently I learned that there was much more to the story than I had realized and when it dawned on me that there were many generations and ancestors and life stories with which I was completely unfamiliar, curiosity opened up a can of possibilities and questions such as…
Where did my ancestors live?
What were their lives like?
What did they do for work or fun?
What about my personality, health or appearance is inherited from them?
When did they come to America?
and most importantly…
Why, oh why, didn’t my ancestors settle and pass down huge tracks of land in California?
When I learned that Ireland was only a stop on the way to America I had to re-think my self-concept and felt the loss of my supposed heritage, but that’s also when the fun began.
At our reunion this summer I recruited my family, as we’ve often done since we got our first video camera, to make a movie of our ‘true’ family history from a record of stories passed down (and possibly embellished over the years). It makes me laugh every time I think of the silliness and fun we had imagining and creating this homage to family history.
Then I found out that any story where there are ‘three brothers’ who earn their fortune and come to America it is likely a made up history. And it turns out that we do have an ancestor who came from Ireland after all!
Do you know where you really come from?
