Second Wind?

So it's 2:30. I'm up. Stupidly. Ancestry.com has sucked me in again. I've come to the point where I can go no further without upgrading to the international account. I have everyone else to the point where they leave the US (meaning, when they arrive in the US), and several threads go back much further than that.

I've come to the following points. Not really conclusions, but something:

My Germans moved here for money or to avoid conscription into the German Army. Or both. They knew where they were going and went there: in my case, Illinois or Missouri. Whatever happened after that is not so uniform (one winds up in St. Vincent's German Orphan Asylum, for instance, while several others turn into mediocre farmers, or fight in the civil war and lose a leg). But they came here as family groups and settled along the Mississippi. Vorberg, Wibbenmeyer, Grothoff, Eiler(s), Lohrum, Fox (Fuchs), Frick.

The English line is old and overwhelmingly complex. My mother's mother's line, via her grandmother Mary Winston Carr, dates back to Jamestown. This was dumbfounding. How her family went from that to dirt farming in the Ozarks is an interesting set of twists and turns--since the American roots there are so old, there's quite a bit to look at. Lawyers and mayors, doctors and sheriffs. This line winds up not of interest to just genealogists, but also historians. Which amuses me somehow. Broadhead, Winston, Carr, Swann, Walton, Eastin.

The Irish were all refugees from the famine or arrivals very soon after (the following year, so really, still part of it). Every single Irish ancestor in my line arrived between 1845 and 1853. Nobody before or after. None of them seem to have had a plan, winding up here and there. No married couples emigrated--only 18-35 year olds, all completely alone on their voyages. Not even sibling groups. The first generation takes on several occupations--farmers, house servants, teamsters, saloon owners. The lucky ones were in Northern New York; the rest settled in Kansas City, and, worse, St. Louis, living in areas on the north side that were razed by 1930 or so because the conditions were really that terrible. Blake, Kidney/Dwyne, Dawes, Aiken, Donnelly, Marion.

I have a single Scottish ancestor, Sarah Whitlock, who emigrates to Virginia with all the English. Many of the Germans, of course, were actually Prussians, but the actual locations are in modern-day Germany. A few were from Saarland, which puts them sometimes in France (but, once again, currently in Germany). And if you believe the information I've found, the deeper English roots jump the channel and join up into minor royalty in France. I'm not sure I buy that at this point. Too much Missour-uh in me: Show Me.

At times, reading this stuff was way too depressing. A lot of the children die. And not within a week of birth--those I usually assume were premature and I can't get too emotional--but lots and lots of 3, 4, 5 year olds. I know this is not uncommon but it got to me after a while, reading about 11 or 12 births and 2 children survive to adulthood. Mostly the Germans lost kids at this rate. My Irish didn't have so many children, which seems counter to stereotype, actually. Of course, the Germans were rural and the Irish were quickly urban (the Donnelly family does have quite a few on their farm in upstate New York, but the Dawes/Blake crowd were small families). My father comes from a family of 8 children, and I kind of assumed that past his father's family (of 4 kids), I'd find whole messes of Blakes. But no--one or two sons. That's it.

Lastly, names. Everybody gets the same damned name, all the time. I got so tired of reading about William Donnellys and Maria Angela Anna Theresia Wibbenmeyers. Edward Blake? Which one? And those English--can't think of a first name? Give your son somebody else's surname. So we get men named Winston, Carr, Garland, Overton. Can you imagine dating a guy named Overton? Every family had its set of names, so when I say "Richard" I'm obviously talking about Blakes, while "Theodore" means a Wibbenmeyer. And the English-speaking countries seem completely satisfied with single first names--Thomas, Richard, Jennie, Bridget, Ann. But those Germans seem to want to cover as many bases as possible. This happens not only back in Westphalia, but all the way to my grandmother's father, Peter Jacob Richard Paul Lohrum. He was born in the US. There's no reason for this.

I say this laughing, because our current plan for Baby's name is three names plus Wissinger. It might as well be Johann Sebastian Casper Stapel-Wibbenmeyer gedant Aussel (which is actually only a slight exaggeration).

So anyway, I'm done for a while. My sisters want me to print this out, or copy it somehow. And then I'd like to help my mother-in-law work on hers (the Baudinos and Stouts seem to have much shorter tenures here in the US). But I'm done with mine until I get up enough curiosity to see what the international upgrade might give me.