Sometimes women receive gifts from their men that they determine are more for the man than them. I don't routinely do that with my husband (although I do enjoy dressing him & keeping him smelling nice). This Christmas, though, I gave my husband a subscription to Ancestry.com and it has ended up that so far, my family tree wins the excitement award.
Last night, I made a discovery that should put me on one of those Ancestry.com commercials.
The odd part is, that this branch of my family is one that I should have know so very much about. This part of may famiy had annual reunions and a HUGE family tree spread out on a table at which attendees could gawk.
Seriously. I looked at that thing every year. But, as most young kids do, I looked to see my name and names of people I actually knew. I would look at the years, etc. and marvel that we could trace our family back so far. However, I never noticed that not very far back in my maternal grandfather's line, we had some quite recognizable folk.
This is Governor Benjamin Harrison V. He was the fifth governor of Virginia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
He also happens to be my great-great-great-great grandfather.
::Knock me over with a feather::
This means that we are also related to his son and his great-grandson who were both Presidents of the United States.
Seriously.
All those years looking at the family tree and not ONE freaking person noticed this?
Leave it to a crazy smart database full of all kinds of information to pull the pieces of that genetic puzzle together. Never mind my absolute freakish fascination with all things historical around that time period or the goofy feelings I had in 8th grade when we toured Mt. Vernon. Seriously. I weirded out the tour guide because I appeared so comfortable and familiar with the place that she'd thought I had to have been a regular visitor. When I told her I'd never been and she asked me how I knew all that I did, I couldn't answer her--I honestly only knew it was George Washington's house before we went there.
Pretty cool little trip through the family tree last night.
Of course, my husband is disappointed that his family tree has barely turned up anything past the 1800's, let alone famous American patriots.
I'm seriously considering applying to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. I wanted to do that when I first learned of such a group (I think I was 7?), but had no idea we had people in our family who would allow for such an approval of such an application.
Wowza.
I better keep digging in my husband's branches or he'll start to think this was actually a gift I gave myself!
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