Don’t listen to your parents

This is probably not the best advice at this time of year, but I assume most of my readers are not expecting fantabulous gifts under the tree from Santa or their parents.

I’ve had lots of fun with the mantra:

Don’t listen to your parents!
They tell you to act your age.
If you act your age, you’ll grow up.
If you grow up, you’ll get old.
If you get old, you’ll die.
So, why act your age?

I’ve done my share of listening to my parents and other parental figures, and taking their advice to heart.  I’ve also done my share of ignoring advice, either because of orneriness or because the advice was just plain wrong.

I think the best advice was just plain encouragement: get good grades.  Sometimes that encouragement also took the form of a dime or a quarter for each A on my report card.  A dime?  That’s not much!  Ah, but I grew up at a time when a movie ticket was ten cents, and candy bars and ice cream cones were a nickel.

My encouragement was also by example.  We had lots of magazines and newspapers in the house, and my brother and I were given books from time-to-time.

My parents were divorced before I started school, and my father “bribed” us with neat Christmas gifts that encouraged creative play.  Among these were train sets and Erector sets.  Our imaginations soared, even as we had difficulty getting every square nut to turn easily on the small screws.

Then there was the advice that was off-the mark or just plain wrong.

One year about St. Patrick’s day we were getting dressed to go somewhere and my brother and I wondered about wearing green.  My mother replied, “We’re Orange Irish!”  As far as we knew, Magree was an Irish name, but we had no knowledge of any ancestor coming from Ireland.  Plus, because of the divorce, my mother had very little contact with her father-in-law and knew very little of our father’s family history.  If she did, she never shared it with us.  On her side, her grandparents were born in England or Germany.

Many decades later, I pieced together that my Magree line was resident in the United States since at least 1830.  An irony was that my great-grandfather was born in England, though he sometimes claimed to be born in Brooklyn.  His father was probably born in Baltimore, and the closest record I have of him having any Irish connection is being the master of a ship in 1851 bringing mostly Irish immigrants from Liverpool to New York.

So much for being Orange-Irish.

When I proposed to my wife-to-be (Jan), my mother didn’t think she was suitable for me and that the marriage would not last.  Sorry, Mom, but it has lasted longer than your two marriages put together.

Before I met Jan, I had flunked out of Case Institute of Technology.  I considered going to Ohio Wesleyan in the middle of Ohio, but my mother didn’t like that.  I wouldn’t be in Cleveland where she could see me more often.  Well, I did go to Ohio Wesleyan and got good enough grades to get into graduate school at Case.

Because of the divorce, I didn’t see my father much and so didn’t get much advice from him.

I did ask him for a loan of $107 to pay for my meals at Ohio Wesleyan for one semester.  When I tried to pay him back, he refused to accept it.

None of his seven children followed his example on education.  He dropped out after the eleventh grade.  All finished high school, five received college degrees, and two of those did graduate work.

But the advice from my Dad that I chuckle about the most is that music must be foot-tapping.  Probably ninety percent of the time that I turn on MPR the music has a strong beat.  Today, it was L’Arlésienne by George Bizet (and I identified it within two minutes!)  If you are not familiar with it, it is the piece that “The Prisoner” times over and over again, getting a different time for each record.

My mother remarried when I was fifteen.  My stepfather insisted that we use Desenex (and only Desenex) on our feet every morning and that we polish our shoes every week.  He did have a point because he had been hospitalized with athlete’s foot some years before.  I haven’t checked with my brother, but I rarely powder my feet.  If I do, it’s with Desenex only because I happen to have it on the shelf.  Polish shoes?  One does not polish today’s athletic shoes, and I can’t even get myself to oil work boots with any regularity.

My last piece of ignored advice is not from a parent, but a teacher.  In my high school boys had to take a semester class called “Personal Regimen”.  I won’t go into the details of the class, but we could get an F for wearing Levis.  I had been wearing Levis since junior high school ($4.95 a pair) and my mother liked them because they were easier to wash than many other pants.  Sixty years plus later, I wear jeans almost all the time: to church, concerts, theater, restaurants, and more.

Oh, one last word.  The best thing I got out of Personal Regimen was learning to tie a tie.  If I really need to, I can still tie a Windsor knot without looking in the mirror.

When people ask Mel’s age, he tells them to guess.  The latest guesser took six tries to guess, all but the last under.

Am I a descendant of illegal immigrants?

My great-grandfather, John J. R. Magree, was supposedly born in Brooklyn, New York, at least according to all the census records from 1870 on, his obituary, and other records.  Brooklyn has no record of his birth.

Because John C. Magree was a mate in New York harbor in the 1850 census and master of the Ship Ivanhoe in Jan. 1851, I assumed that John C. Magree was his father.  The Brooklyn city directories of the 1850s list a Margaret Magree, widow.  Was she the abandoned wife of John C. Magree?  John C. Magree was still alive during the Civil War.

However I did find records of the marriage in Liverpool, England, of John C. Magree and Margaret Pope, and then of the birth to this couple of John James Richard Magree.  Given the rarity of the name Magree, isn't the probability rather strong that this is the John James Richard Magree who became known as John J. R. Magree as an adult?

But I can find no record of Margaret Magree and John J. R. Magree traveling on John C. Magree's ship or any other ship.  Did John C. bring them as unlisted passengers?  Did they not need to be on the manifest because they were the master's family?  As far as I can tell, the same manifest did not list any of the crew, either.

So, do we follow the rule that Barack Obama, born in Hawaii of an American mother and a Kenyan father, is not born in America?  Or do we follow the rule that Ted Cruz and John McCain, born in Canada and the Panama Canal Zone, respectively, of at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen, are born in America?  I guess, sarcastically, since I am white we follow the Cruz/McCain rules.

However, if we follow the "Obama" rule, then I am the descendant of illegal immigrants.  Not only was my great-great grandmother presumably born in England, but we have have no birth certificate to prove that John C. Magree was born in the United States.  The only "proof " is that on his marriage application in England, John Cornelius Magree gave his father's name as Vinsent Magree.  There was a Vincent Magree in the 1840 census with at least one male around 12 years old.

That's all rather slim evidence that my paternal line has been born of legal immigrants.

If that makes me an illegal immigrant too, where should I be deported to?  England, Germany, Poland?  I have traced ancestors to all three of those countries.

Distortions in family history

If you are working on your family history, be careful of what you are told.  What you are told could be made up or it could be misinterpreted.  Document everything and then crosscheck it with other documents.

The most blatant tale that I can think of is what my mother told me around a St. Patrick's Day.  She said, "We are Orange Irish."  One, her ancestors were from England and Germany, not Ireland.  Two, she didn't know any of her in-laws besides her U.S. born father-in-law and German-born mother-in-law.

So far, I have found only one Magree ancestor going back four generations that was not born in the United States.  My great grandfather, John James Richard Magree, was born in Liverpool, England of an American father and an English mother.  Given that her maiden name was Pope, she may or may not have had Irish ancestors.  Many Irish immigrated to Liverpool.  However, all of the other records that I have for him say he was born in the U.S. and more specifically in Brooklyn.

I do know that the name Magree is centered in Kilkenny, Ireland and some of those Magrees are buried in a Catholic Church cemetery.  If my Magree ancestors were from there, they most likely would have been Catholic.

I was told that my grandfather was born in Poughkeepsie, New York.  But his death certificate gives Brooklyn, his parents were in a Brooklyn city directory at the time of his birth, and one of his sister's birth certificates gives that same address.  But somebody else on ancestry.com has that sister born in Poughkeepsie!

I read the death certificate of my paternal grandmother's father as his birthplace being "Schlossing"; the information was provided by one of his sons.  Knowing my grandmother was born in Germany I kept looking for a town with that name.  Then it dawned on me that it should be "Schlesien", German for Silesia.  Silesia is now mostly in Poland.  Somebody else on ancestry.com had his birth as "Schlassing".  As part of checking if my grandmother may have been Catholic, I looked up Silesia.  I learned that there is a Silesian German and the speakers call themselves Schlässinger.  I have since found out that my grandmother's town of leaving was called Osseg; it is now Osiek in Polish.

I have learned so much family history in the last thirty years, but I will need another thirty years to even fill in details about the people whose names I know.

But, regardless of where my ancestors came from, I do not consider myself Orange Irish or Green Irish or German or Polish or even Brooklynite:)  My nationality is American!
See also What nationality are you?  An irrelevant question!

My nationality is American

A favorite conversational item of many Americans is "What nationality are you?"  This happens often because we are a nation of immigrants from elsewhere or the descendants of immigrants.  But how is it that the nationality of someone from Canada is Canadian and from Australia is Australian?

One of my favorite comebacks is "What nationality is the King of Sweden?"  Following the male line back, he's French; he's descended from Marechal Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's marshals.

As for me, my paternal grandmother is the only immigrant among my grandparents; she was born in Silesia, at that time part of Germany.  The other three were all born in the United States.  As I hardly knew my grandmother, I didn't have much German influence.

Of my great-grandparents, four were born in Germany, three were born in England, and one supposedly was born in Brooklyn.  More about him later.  I never knew my German great-grandparents, and we never had any German traditions in our house.  I only knew my mother's paternal grandmother, and the only thing English I experienced from her was tea, with Carnation milk!

As for the supposedly Brooklyn-born great-grandfather, I've found some indications that he probably was born in Liverpool, England.  Most of the records for him give his name as John J.R. Magree, but Brooklyn has no birth certificate for him.  I did find two Liverpool records for the child John James Robert Magree.  His mother may have been Irish or English, but his father was John Cornelius Magree, probably the John C. Magree who was the master of the Ship Ivanhoe bringing immigrants from Liverpool to New York in Jan 1851.  There was no John J.R. Magree in the passenger list.  Interestingly, on his marriage record, John C.'s father was Vinsent Magree [sic], Vincent Magree was in Baltimore in the 1830 Census.

Other than possibly John C.s marriage in Liverpool, I have found no ancestor that I can link to Ireland.

My only Irish link to the name Magree is from Magree's I contacted in Australia.  They can trace their Magree ancestors to Kilkenny, Ireland, and even to some specific pieces of land.

Interestingly, on one St. Patrick's Day, my mother said "We are Orange Irish".  Other than her in-laws, she knew nothing of my father's grandparents.

Having lived in Italy for two years and in Sweden for four years, I like to kid that I am more Italian than many Americans that call themselves Italian and likewise for "Swedes".

Reconstructing family history

Genealogy once upon a time seemed to be a search for illustrious ancestors. As it became more and more popular for people just to connect back to Europe, people came just as interested in the stories of their ancestors as in the connections of one generation to another. Besides, the stories often gave clues on how to find the connections.

I've been interested in the origins of the name Magree for years, but really didn't make much progress until the 1970s when I stumbled on a whole bunch in Australia. From some of them I found that they could trace their ancestors to Kilkenny, Ireland.

My own personal search stopped with my greatgrandfather, John J.R. Magree who was born in Brooklyn in 1851. I've gathered a few stories about him and his descendants, but I gave up on searching documents to go back further.

Meanwhile, I do a Google search on Magrees and turn up a few I never heard of before. I generally don't follow up because the letter exchange or telephone calls would just eat up time from all the other activities I want to do.

Every so often my curiosity gets the better of me and I attempt to contact someone. I did this recently through classmates.com and got a reply. She gave me some information about her ex-husband. I made the connection to one of my uncles, replied to her, and haven't heard from her since. I probably exhausted her interest in the subject.

However, this led me to reflect on some decades-old issues. My family is not very good on keeping connections up, possibly because of many divorces. I had not seen my paternal grandmother since I was about 7 or 9, but I sent her Christmas cards and maybe birthday cards for a long, long time.

The year after I was married, we drove through Chicago on our way home to Cleveland. I stopped at a phone booth, looked my grandmother up, called her, and she invited us to stop by.

She was living upstairs in a duplex where her youngest son, his wife, and children lived downstairs. My wife and I remember her bitterly complaining about her daughter-in-law.

A couple of nights ago, during a sleepless period, several weeks after I received the message through classmates.com, two explanations about the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict popped into my head.

Both were born in Germany.

My grandmother had come to the U.S. when she was about six, but as an adult she spoke probably only English. Her children would ask for German words but she had a harder and harder time remembering any.

My aunt was the widow of a German soldier and the mother of a young son. She met my uncle, a G.I., after the war and came to the U.S. with her son.

I wonder if there was friction between the two women because 1) my grandmother could no longer speak fluent German and was frustrated, or 2) my grandmother had antipathy towards Germans in general because of the two World Wars.

I may never know. All the principals are dead now except possibly my aunt's first son. I may never get sufficient curiosity to follow up with people who may be reluctant to get involved with distant relatives.

And this is how so many interesting stories get lost or garbled.