Re: Apologising for one's ancestors

danny boy wrote:

Some insights into history which deserve more detail.....

I'm not sure that the English were quite as homogenous as they pretend
to be and I wonder if this is where the rankling comes in - the desire
to have blue or pure blood - a myth that stemmed from the upper classes
and a royal family that is decidedly mixed.

Please don't apply this theory to Roy Stockdill .... as a rabid republican I believe he lives in terror of finding an aristocratic ancestor <g>

> In the seventeenth century
there were numerous large books recording the marriages between blacks
and whites.

What are these 'large books'? Do they still exist? If so where?

Dublin had the largest black population in Europe.

At what date? What is your authority for this statement?

England has been invaded by the french and ruled by the french and of
course there were always Arab and Indian merchants and entrepreneurs -
another fact that rankles when I bring it up in discussions.

Again .... at what date did these Arab and Indian merchants exist .... I presume you mean they were in Britain. Obviously they existed in their own territories ..... but it matters *when* we are talking about, for the purposes of your argument. At different times such merchants and entrepreneurs would have operated under European administration even in their own lands. And at some periods their merchandise would have included slaves.

There is
more 'us' in history than us and them but many people on this forum are
resistant to that fact.

If you mean we all have family histories that include different nationalities and even races then it could not be more absurd to say that anyone here is 'resistant' to that fact. We are family historians for God's sake. We find out these things and revel in a bit of the unusual in our bloodlines.

The greater differences lie between the haves
and have-nots, and most families in England would have a mix of both.

Probably more 'have-nots' in most people's history. There just were overwhelmingly more of them than there were 'haves'. And not much upward mobility until recently.

I was surprised to find a Goliah Gray on my family tree, it suggests
something other than English but I have had no help on this forum or
others in discerning where it might come from.

As mentioned earlier I had some time away from this forum, due to ill-health. In respect of your original post about Goliath ..... I would probably have answered it as I have Gipsy forebears. The name does indicate a possibility, a strong one, but you need more information. I recommend Sharon Floate's book 'My Ancestor was a Gypsy' available by mail order from the Society of Genealogists' website. Also you might consider joining the Romany and Traveller Family History Society (website online) which has a very good quarterly magazine included in its modest fee.

I have found a few
other strange names and have found - when discussing it with other
people interested in genealogy - that I am not alone. Unusual family
names are not always spelling errors but a representation of the waves
of immigration from Europe and other continents to England.

Well, yes, they may be. Or they may be transcription errors. Only careful and rigorous research will reveal which.

Yes on one side in my family we run straight down the line to
well-to-do's in a picturesque village. The descendants of this line
are not blond or blue eyed nor do they have that lily white skin. They
have dark hair, acquiline features and green eyes.

And your point is?

I once read a description of the people of Berkshire, the labouring classes, where they were described as small dark-skinned black-eyed and generally sounded very 'Mediterranean'. It would amuse me to think my gipsy looks came from my gipsies, but they could clearly just as well have come from my Berkshire brickmakers.

How can we ever be
sure where we came from?

Well, duh! That's why we are tracing out genealogy .....

Women were supressed and controlled - being
pregnant and single was a crime - but I dare say they still had some
secret liaisons.

Actually being pregnant and single was not a crime. It was a problem and as happened to my ancestress Sarah SHUTTLE could lead to the local authorities sending you back sharpish to your place of settlement so you wouldn't become a financial burden .... but no crime had been committed. Sarah went on to repeat the offence four more times <g> How secret her liasons were in a small village I can rather doubt.....

England is just not proud of this mixing, in fact
many families have gone to great lengths to cover up their true
stories.

But you won't find such people in this newsgroup. Here we go to great lengths to uncover the truth about our families, which sometimes means exposing lies told by embarrassed ancestors .... But most of those lies are not about 'mixed blood' but about illegitimacy or sexual abberations ..... things which were once a source of shame and are now less so .....

I suppose DNA testing will illuminate us more on that score.

Don't hold your breath. It will be a long time before DNA will be really useful in genealogy. Suppose you and I could prove our DNA was or was not pure Romany .....that would still not prove that Goliath, or my James Smith were not 'travellers' of the non-Romany kind. Or help me discover James' parentage in 1799 ....

We are all more closely linked than we think - and yet here I am on a
forum where someone thinks it is an insult to call me an American. I
am not American but given the behaviour on this forum, of those who
claim to be English, I would certainly choose to align with the more
reasonable camp.

It is a great detriment to your general credibility to characterise Q and JAP as 'reasonable'. At some future date you may find yourself disowning the liason <g>

Liz (Greenwich UK)

.

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