WHERE AM I FROM?

I still wish there was a mood entry for PO'd.

AOL had a poll to suggest things that the president should consider doing next year. I dipped very briefly into the postings. Basically looking for the most outrageous title and read it. It was an extraordinarily badly written and misspelled entry that basically said “if you don’t love President Bush get the hell out of MY country. Go back where you came from.” That got me thinking. Where would I go?

 

Family folk lore places the first immigration of some of my ancestors to the mid 1600’s in Plymouth Colony. Through a cousin line we can claim Stephen Hopkins who signed the Declaration of Independence and was a grandfather when he entered the Continental Congress. He was also from Rhode Island. The only state that didn’t have a representative in Philadelphia when the Constitution was drawn up. They didn’t show up and nobody went looking them. I guess the contrary streak in the family got started really, really early.

 

My last name is Heaton. I’ve looked up the name on the net and traced it to Yorkshire in northern England. One of the last parts of England to accept the Reformation. So my money is on a Catholic who was tired of persecution, a fisherman who either wanted his own ship or was just plain tired of fishing, a crofter who was tired of looking at the north ends of south bound sheep, or maybe a younger son who wanted his own land and wasn’t cut out for either the law, the church, or the army. Heck, maybe even somebody who was really dirt poor and indentured himself for five or seven years in return for passage to the New World

 

Another ancestor was born in Vermont in 1814. We’ve got pictures of men who fought on both sides of the Civil War. Considering the strong strain of pure contrariness on both sides of the family, one probably went one way to spite the other. Since at least two of the lines in my family come from the border states, they may have put people on both sides hoping they’d come up with a winner one way or the other. That happens in Civil Wars sometimes.

 

One great great grandfather was at least half German and was born here. Near as we can tell everybody in the family was in place here in the United States by the mid 1800’s. So, my family has at least five perhaps over a dozen generation born in this country. Over the years they’ve poured their work, their hopes, their dreams, their children and yes their blood into this country. So yeah, I don’t like President Bush and I’m not going anywhere. This is where I’m from and I’m staying.