Looking Back and Moving Forward
Sorry for the many posts - I’m catching up on posting things I’ve written!
I grew up thinking I was a large percentage Irish - but I’ve found that’s not true. (By large, I mean maybe 30%, but I’m not even that.) I’m only a little Irish on my mom’s side, not even my dad’s. I have a shamrock tattoo. I have many claddagh rings (like this old, beat up one). My maiden name was Irish, or so I thought. Turns out it is actually English. And when researching, I may not even be as English as I thought I was - my great grandfather may have been adopted by a stepfather and I cannot find any trace of his birth father.
Over the last couple years, I’ve really been working on tracing my ancestry. It’s been a lot of looking back and moving forward; studying names and handwriting and digging through history. I’m fascinated by the search for where our family began. While my kids are half Hispanic and African American from my husbands side, their other half is a mix of many, many European countries.
I grew up thinking I was a large percentage Irish - but I’ve found that’s not true. (By large, I mean maybe 30%, but I’m not even that.) I’m only a little Irish on my mom’s side, not even my dad’s. I have a shamrock tattoo. I have many claddagh rings (like this old, beat up one). My maiden name was Irish, or so I thought. Turns out it is actually English. And when researching, I may not even be as English as I thought I was - my great grandfather may have been adopted by a stepfather and I cannot find any trace of his birth father. Whatever we are, I find over time that my background isn’t as important to me as it once seemed. Tracing my family has been interesting (I’ve traced some lines back to the 800s), but it doesn’t define who I am today.
Even though I’m a little sad I’m not much Irish.
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