St. Who Day?

Today there will be a lot of parades, a lot of drinking of green beer, a lot of wearing some bit of green, a lot of music by Irish composers. I'll be only participating in the last if I happen to have the radio on. Why should I do anything more? Especially drinking green(?) beer. Good God! There is plenty of good Irish beer without adulterating it with green food coloring.

With the name Magree, I must be Irish, right? Well, four of my great-grandparents were born in Germany, at least two in England and maybe a third, and one was born in Brooklyn, New York. That is the one who had the name Magree. I have been unable to find much more about his ancestry other than the 1870 census, which said his parents came from England. Born in England? Took a ship from England?

My mother said we were "orange Irish", but she never knew her grandfather-in-law who left the family before my mother was even born. I think she said that because her family tradition was Protestant, mostly Methodist.

I did poke around a bit in various records and found that all those named Magree or McGree who can trace their ancestry into the nineteenth century can trace it to Kilkenny. I visited Kilkenny in 1979 to see if I could find any leads. Many people were helpful but I found nothing of direct use to me. And guess what my "nationality" was when I was there? American!

We have often enjoyed receiving a St. Patrick's Day card from a distant cousin (I assume we have a common ancestor in the 18th Century). The "Irish sailor" that she supposedly descended from might have been born in Baltimore MD in 1818 and became a ship's master of immigrant ships. My distant cousin has never confirmed that this person is her ancestor. Of course, this John C. Magree could be my great-great-grandfather as he would have been 22 when my great-grandfather was born.

Yes, it is fun to know where one's ancestors came from, but for many of us their origin has little to do with our own personal culture. In fact, we have more Swedish culture in our family than any of our ancestors' cultures; this happened because we lived in Sweden for four years. Furthermore, there is no such thing as English genes, German genes, Italian genes, and so on. Almost any "national group" is an amalgam of people from a wide area.

Enough! I'm not going to have any beer today, Irish or otherwise. My beverage budget is spent for the month. If you are so inclined, I hope you have a fun time on a day that is a good excuse for a party.

May the road come up to meet your feet (and not your face).

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.