Considerations from Ancestry.com

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

When I was young, I remember my parents and other older relatives spending evenings recollecting who was related to whom, what Aunt Matilda’s maiden name was and so forth and so on. One time, when my parents lived near cemeteries where various relatives were buried, we spent a Sunday afternoon driving around and looking at tombstones. This was not at my request, by the way. At the end of it all, I was so confused, I gave up on learning much about my ancestors.

Today, if you have access to a computer and are willing to spend a few dollars a month for a subscription, Ancestry.com has taken all the guesswork out of determining your lineage. Spend a few more bucks on their DNA tests and all the mysteries and vague remembrances are a thing of the past.

The DNA tests are pure science. Nothing here to argue about.

Ancestry.com’s other data comes from census records, birth certificates, marriage records and death certificates, with an occasional military citation thrown in for good measure. These are all about as solid source documents as one can find.

My oldest grandsons (ages 14 and 10) are old enough to understand this stuff. I have explained to them that every living being is the result of a unique paring between male and female, occurring within milliseconds. Wait five seconds and the offspring is different. Wait two seconds and the offspring is different. This is true for any living organism on the planet. We, and our dogs, cats, cattle, hogs, rabbits and on and on and on, are all individual unique pairings. The only time this is not true is in the case of identical twins, and it is true for them as a pair.

Further, we are unique pairings for every generation our species or any species has been in existence. The pairing that created your great-great-great-great-grandmother is just as important as the pairing that created you, for they were all unique in their own time, lending the DNA from their own time to the DNA that is you today.

Now, I don’t have to go back too far in my lineage, on both sides of the family, to find an eldest child (and this only applies to eldest children) who got here on the “express gestation track.” What I mean by this, is when you look up their parents’ marriage certificate and you look up the child’s birth certificate, one often finds the time span to be something less, sometimes way less, than the standard nine months. I don’t even know how to calculate my own, for my parents were married 13 months after I was born. Yet, I am not the only one in my lineage on the “express gestation track” – there are plenty of other Victorians who seemed to have been a bit anxious when I review the records comparing their marriage date and their eldest child’s birth certificate.

So what’s the point? Simply this. You may be pro-abortion or anti-abortion, but it is a near certainty in your lineage, makes no difference if it was a long time ago or fairly recent, a mother or a couple, chose to preserve your lineage that is exactly you no matter the societal shame, the financial burden, or the struggle of juggling an infant along with other responsibilities. If you are pro-abortion, you are here today voicing your opinion because someone made a decision you may think no one should now have to make. That is your right in the United States. My purpose is to help you understand what it took to get here where you can now voice that opinion. 

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.