Falling Prey to the Seduction of Family Connections

Can you name the famous descendants of the Mayflower passengers?

(answers)

In the previous blog, The Pursuit of Family Connections, we saw just one example of how researching our families can lead to startling connections to people in the past and present, people we never would have imagined to be a part of our family.

It is entirely possible that my family has a connection to Old Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. It all centers on one question: Did one of his four daughters marry the Chief of the Walla Walla, known as Peo-Peo-Mox-Mox or Yellow Bird? The timing is right, the fact that marriage was often used to bind different tribes together would make sense, and their ages work. Peo-Peo-Mox-Mox’s daughter did indeed marry into one of our family lines. But the missing links are knowing who Chief Joseph’s daughters were and finding any documentation that one of them had married the Chief of the Walla Wallas.

Christopher “Kit” Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. “He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and news articles; exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. His understated nature belied confirmed reports of his fearlessness, combat skills, tenacity, as well as profound effect on the westward expansion of the United States. Although he was famous for much of his life, historians in later years have written that Kit Carson did not like, want, or even fully understand the fame that he experienced during his life.”^[1]

As I researched David and Lititia Carson’s lives in southern Oregon, and traced their family lines to my own, and potentially to Old Chief Joseph, it soon became evident that Kit Carson was also in my family line. I suspect that he may well be. But once again it comes down to the records, records that do not yet point to that connection.

There are family trees found online that show such a connection, sometimes so many of them exist it seems it must be true. When you dive into the source material for each of those trees you often find none at all, and that people are simply believing the connection and adding it to their own records. When I look at the Carson history’s there is a weak point where if you lean one way you’d put Kit Carson in your tree, lean another way and eliminate him from your tree. Once again, it is the documentation that is missing.

Probably no two men in western American history have had more written about them than have Capt.’s Meriweather Lewis and William Clark. Meriweather Lewis, in particular, remains to this day one of the most researched and enigmatic figures of history. Besides his historic journey to the Pacific with Clark, there remains great controversy about, not only his death, but his genealogical legacy.

Having never married there would be no offspring. But the story of a relationship with an Indian woman and the possibility of a child has brought forth people who claim descendancy from that child. The proof of that family tie lies in stories, not primary documents, and it is most likely only through DNA research that the question may be resolved.

That work is currently underway through the Virginia Project (information about Lewis and the Virgina Project here) and the LEWIS Surname DNA Project. Until this extensive work is completed, we may never know if there are truly descendants of Meriweather Lewis. Like others that have found branches of their family that connect to the Lewis line, I may not ever find that I can definitively add him to my own family tree.

Here we have someone who is in my family, this sporty fly fisherman, the 30th President of the United States, President Calvin Coolidge. His history as a President aside, I was at least happy to find he had the same indulgence that my father taught me. I enjoyed reading about the discovery of Coolidge’s tackle box, and that he offended fly fishing enthusiasts by admitting he occasionally used worms, as have I. His presence in my family tree is more straightforward than the others above, for here we have the ideal blending of history and documentation.

And the Mayflower? Well, I’m pretty closely related, but there is not the direct descendancy that is required for membership to the Society of Mayflower Descendants. While I can place a passenger of the Mayflower in my tree, I am not a direct descendant because my lines derive from the brother of the husband of a Mayflower descendent. Thus, I’m not acceptable for membership to the Society. Interestingly, that brother arrived 3 years later on the ship Anne, so I guess that makes me a direct descendant of the second landing of immigrants to the future America (aside from the fact that, uh, there were already a lot of people living here i.e., Native Americans).

There is a seductiveness in the idea that we may be related to someone famous, to a historical figure that had left some indelible mark on American history. As I’ve said before, there is something in the human psyche that draws us to wanting that connection to famous people. For those who study history and genealogical lines, the temptation to attach our lines to King Arthur, the Mayflower, to Presidents, to explorers and others, is almost unescapable. So strong is the urge that we build out our trees to include these people, often without verifiable proof. I’ve done it often enough… I hear a recognizable name and then spend hours trying to draw a family line to that person.

Which is where verification comes in. As much as my own psyche tremors with delight at the prospect, I have to make myself wait before adding Old Chief Joseph to my tree. Kit is close but needs just a little more work. Meriweather would be fun for me to be related to, but I’m not convinced the DNA will prove it out. Calvin… (noted for an administration perhaps best remembered for its litany of corruption and scandals) I think I’ll just have him in my tree as a distant fly fisherman.

And the Mayflower, well, I’m sort of connected directly, but then, this is where I can’t help but think of the well-worn phrase, “We are all connected.” Indeed, it is the infinite, interconnected web of people and histories that bind us all. The fascinating part about researching our family genealogy is not necessarily who we are connected to, but rather, how people in our past impacted history, the land, other people, and ultimately, ourselves.