or When Your Family Tree Looks More Like a Web

Last night, we had to help Fluffy catch up on a homework project that she forgot to tell me about- that was due last week. It is about your family’s heritage, culture, whatever you want to call it. It made for some interesting conversation.

How do you tell a kid that her family is a bunch of inbred ne’er-do-wells? Seriously.  Both of my parents maternal grandparents have the same surname. One family changed it when they came to the continent and the other kept it as is. Since parents didn’t have the same grandparents, they were granted a  marriage license in 1978, but I doubt it would be hard to connect her family tree to his.  Another twist is my brother’s father-in-law just completed a family genealogy on my dad’s mom’s family because there was a chance they could be related as her family originated in Great Britain.

Mike and I have always wondered if our gene’s are closely related. His father’s mother’s family is Choctaw and both my parent’s have Choctaw ancestry.  Given as Mike’s family is also of African slave descent, it’s highly unlikely that we are more than fourth cousins twice removed. And besides, our families from different ends of Mississippi, so that pretty much cancels that idea…. pfft.