20 October 2020

Family Lore

The other day I discovered I have something in common with Elizabeth Warren.

My family's lore is inaccurate.
 
I've got no Japanese blood.  Great-grandma Kikiko is really my distant great aunt.

She married into the Oregon branch of the McThags and they moved to Iowa near our branch.  Learning more about the history of the founding of Oregon, I can see why they fled to the relative tolerance of the Midwest.

I'd always been told by grampa that his grampa had fought in the Indian wars.
 
Nope.  The timing is all wrong.

His grampa came straight from England and plunked down in Iowa in 1851 and started farming.  His brothers settled in New Jersey and Oregon.
 
It appears that I'm the only McThag to have ever served.
 
Oh!  How are we McThags when we emigrated from Jolly Ol' not Scotland?
 
We emigrated from Scotland to England first!  This is a murkier part of the history for details, but the broad strokes are there.
 
During one of the wars between Scotland and England my ancestors took the land deal from the English.  By the time everything had settled out, we only had lands in England, near Stafford.  There's even a town bearing the name of the first English McThag.  We were no longer called the McThags after that but the [realnames] consisting of ancestor's nickname and geographic association together.

The pettiest of petty nobility we were.

The three brothers who came to America were the youngest of many children, so no family wealth or titles to keep them.

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