More recently as I have been interested though, I have come to discover that they have to use distant links even to start somewhere. They use their grandparents siblings or cousins, great aunts or uncles, 2nd or 3rd generation cousins--all as jumping points to start working back.
In such a way I have realized that all of their, and ultimately my family lineages in a direct descent are unknown. We have definitely been on the losing side of history on both my mother and father's side.
My mother's father was an Scottish-Irish immigrant who came over with his half-dozen brothers and sisters, and they grew up in Texas during the great depression. They left their clan of McGarrah's behind in the UK in order to find a way out of their poverty, only to find an uglier face of it here in the US.
My mother's mother was an alcoholic Osage Indian, and so was her mother and mother before her of Pettit's. I don't need to mention how well the records and treatment were kept of Native Americans...
My father's father was one of 12 Catholic Bennett children that moved from Missouri, Arkansas, to Texas during the depression. Their father was an orphan and nothing is known about his family...well he was an orphan...dead end there.
My father's mother was a Russian/Polish Jew. Her family of Schmidts and Feinbergs came over from Vilnius in modern day Lithuania around the time of the Russian pograms and moved to Brooklyn. Not much of a direction there, it's definitely not as if I can trace any Jews living in Poland, Russia, or anywhere in eastern Europe for that matter.
At least I know who my mother and father are, and who their parents were. That's something! I wish I could go back further though.
Here is an ode from the Greek Pindaros:
Even high deeds of prowess
Have a great darkness if they lack song;
We can hold up a mirror to fine doings
In one way only:
If with the help of Memory in her glittering crown
Recompense is found for labour
In words' echoing melodies.
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