Ancestors

A personal exploration
by Ani Ashford Trotter

The tintype my mother handed me was heavily damaged from being wrapped in tissues by my grandmother. Only 2" x 3", this sacred piece of ancestry was carefully handed into my custody to see if I could redeem more of the young face which peered from a space frozen in time. It would take several hours with scanning and adjustments with my digital art programs to allow us to see this face. We both gasped in surprise and joy when I enlarged the picture on my computer screen. There was a jolt of recognition, and a sense of connection. Granville’s eyes were the same shape of my grandmother's eyes, as mine are.

Granville Malone was a nineteen year old civilian when he died of pneumonia in the custody of the Union Army. He had accompanied his uncle from Texas to Mississippi in an effort to provide supplies to the Confederate Army, and he was captured. In the story that has been handed down, generation after generation, the Union soldiers really tried to keep him alive by putting him next to the smoke-stack of the boat as they tried to keep him warm. The pneumonia won. His mother never recovered from her grief at losing this beautiful son.

We often speak in glorified terms of The American Civil War. That was so long ago, in another cruel war nearly 144 years ago. Nineteen was just too young to die. He was the uncle of my maternal grandmother (long before she was born).

Two other tintypes were handed to me to scan. My great grandfather Clarence, brother of Granville, as a very young man. He proudly wears a Masonic ring. The ring was not visible in the minutia of the tintype, but was clear after it was scanned and enlarged. The other tintype was of his mother, Margaret. Working with these photos almost seemed like a form of forensic anthropology. Each moment revealed something more. These pictures would be my contribution to the growing family archives of photos we had collected. Little glimpses of the people our ancestors had been have filled several volumes of albums. I have printed copies for each family member who wished one.

My ancestry combines the Scottish, Welsh, English, Irish, Norman, Germanic, French and Cherokee Indian. Like a tapestry, the strands of each are shining in the very essence of my being, if I am willing to acknowledge it. It is very "American" to be such a mixture of ancestry and traditions. It brought to mind the question of from where my family traditions and traits have evolved.

For the last three summers starting in 2002, my Mum and I have traveled to the heart of Texas. Our wanderings leading us from the center of Plano, Texas where my Routh and Campbell ancestors built a new homes in a wilderness of early Texas, to the farmlands of the panhandle and the place of the ancestral "home" of my maternal grandparents. Of that home, all that is left is a field of wheat stubble with broken bits of stucco. Bula, Muleshoe and Littlefield are place names, which always bring the remembrances of excitement. I was a "city child" who loved to visit my grandparents on their farm. It did not seem like such a desert to me.

My childhood memories of my grandparents' farm are vivid of the little oasis they had planted in the middle of the dry farmland. How do I describe the reddish earth, which compacts into hard, cracked clay after baking in the hot, Texas sun? This is a place where the earth sings when it rains, the drops plopping upon the dry soil, bringing the whistles and hisses as the earth sucks the water up. Sometimes the rainwater runs like a river over the sun baked ground, until the moisture is able to finally sink into and soften the hard surface.

Rows of green cotton, wheat, soybeans or sunflowers contrast against the red earth in a good year. In a bad year of drought, plant-life struggles to even exist. What we called 'dust devils' were currents of wind which like a miniature tornado, danced away with the parched soil. These contrasting elements were what made the "home place" and surrounding gardens so special. A short fence divided the green of grapevines, gooseberry bushes, roses, marigolds, dahlias, cherry trees and vegetable garden from the harsh world beyond. In the evening the smell of marigolds mixed with four-o-clocks and roses filling the air. The mocking birds sang under a full moon in the sour cherry trees, whilst the distant windmill's echoing sounds would creek, clank and whirr as it turned in the wind.

There was one silly chicken who insisted on laying her eggs in the grass beneath the gooseberry bushes in the corner of the front fence. Despite the absence of a rooster, she really wanted to hatch her eggs. This was a continuing total failure to produce life. (I know there is a lesson in that observation somewhere.)

On summer nights, on the back steps, my grandfather would tell stories of his days "punching cows" on the way to Oklahoma, as we grandchildren would eat yellow watermelon and have seed-spitting contests in that back yard.

These memories frame my yearning to learn more of my ancestors and to keep their lives and struggles remembered as something to learn from. To me it honours their cycle of living and passing.

The airplane trip to Dallas, Texas was uneventful. My Mum and I arrived and acquired our rental car, and set out for a small place called Weatherford, which is north west of Dallas-Fort Worth. The two days previous there had been several "twisters" which had caused a bit of havoc in the weather. We certainly hoped all would be "safe" as I drove towards our destination.

Mile by mile, the flat landscape flickered past. Comparison to the hills of my home in Washington state made it seem even more so. The vegetation was unusually green around Dallas for June due to the rainfall. In the evening light, we witnessed dark clouds forming a funnel cloud high and distant above the setting sun. Thankfully, it dissipated and did not morph into a dreaded tornado.

Soon there would be aunts, uncles and cousins. My Mum was feeling a bit stressed as she was tired from travel, and anticipating seeing her aging brothers and sisters, and greeting her baby sister who has been struggling with cancer. It is hard to experience the frailty of age with gentle honesty, embracing our mortality. Each year we realize that treasuring the moments is important. It is life's cycle.

In all this, my thoughts were of how to be supportive, and I prayed for the strength to stay patient and positive. "How much am I like my family?" These were the thoughts as I mingled with the aunts and uncles as they arrived. Each one of them has their burdens of life's pains, and each has their strengths.

Family... It isn't just about DNA, but of learned patterns of responses. I have always thought that if certain worms in a laboratory could remember learned responses generation after generation, humans could also have the memories of their ancestors. Could that be deja vu? I wondered how far back certain family traits had gone on and how nature and nurture had so formed us all to who we were, body, mind and soul.

In family, we have shared not just discoveries of the ever expanding family trees, but the repetitive ailments our family line has bequeathed us. Diabetes Mellitus, near-sightedness, cataracts, arthritis, depressions, obesity, alcoholism, anger and rage.... lists of all these attributes could go on. In some ways I take it with a pinch of salt, as it seems to me that the way we learn to interact with life's path plays a large role in our health. It makes me more determined not to react to life, but to become one with the flow of life with a balance within myself.. This is not always an easy task for me.

One legacy of my ancestors has been the love of earth. They were close to the earth as farmers, as they grew their own food and nurtured their farm animals. Their hens were not caged and the animals were never fed with compounds from other animals. There were no hormones, nor antibiotics, and I doubt they would have chosen to use those. My grandmother loved the stars and constellations. She knew every one by heart. I can barely discern Orion or the Big Dipper on a clear night.

Since the 'family reunion' many of my days have been almost a meditation as I scan the many old photos from my Mum's albums. Each face, stance, smile, or crease in the life maps before me, speak to me. There are moments when I know these people, sometimes with the jolt of recognition when bits of myself are reflected back. Sometimes I mourn their losses, or rejoice in their success, always with their untimely messages to me: I strive to live life fully, savoring each moment, with acceptance of reality, without losing hope and dreams, no matter what happens.

My ancestors, the Irish, Scots, Welsh and Cherokee, all had one thing in common. As each family had traveled through time and space for a very long distance to arrive at their destinations, they did so as people of endurance and tenacity.

Ani Ashford Trotter
AwenGlow [at] aol [dot] com
July 2004