in the usa, most of us have little knowledge of our ancestors. perhaps because we are such a young country. many of us who are interested in those who came before us can only trace our families back a few generations. in my case, i know back to my ancestors who lived in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. on my father's side of the family, both the paternal and maternal branches of the family tree had similar histories. my paternal forebears were from pennsylvania, while those on my paternal grandmother's side started from maryland. both moved down the east coast and across the gulf south generation by generation before finally settling in arkansas where i was born and still reside. my grandmother's kin arrived here in the mid-nineteenth century, while my grandfather's parents came in the late nineteenth century. on my mother's side of the family, all of her ancestors started in central north carolina, coming to southern arkansas not too long after president jefferson's louisiana purchase.
my family history is fairly typical of the american experience, as young men and women left the more settled parts of the young country to move west. i'm not certain what motivated the ancestors on my father's side of the family to first move south before heading west into arkansas, where they halted their westward migration. i know that my paternal grandmother's people were farmers, for the most part, while my paternal grandfather's family were lumbermen. perhaps all of them were seeking cheaper tracts of land to pursue their vocations and were lured on by reports from other family members and friends who had gone before them, finally finding in arkansas the opportunities they had not found in other locales.
on my mother's side, we have a fairly detailed history of my great-great-grandfather leaving his home in north carolina with his family and a number of their possessions, which to my shame included several slaves. this entourage moved directly to a part of southern arkansas where several relations had already settled. the county in which they lived is still full of our relatives, and many of those who have passed are buried in a family cemetery near the county seat. i don't know as much about my grandmother's family, except that they settled in a community in southwestern arkansas where a number of families from their area of north carolina had settlted. the community's center was the mars hill baptist church, and many of my forebears are buried in the church cemetery there.
the women in my maternal grandmother's family seem to have been plucky bunch. i knew my great-grandmother well, because she lived well into her nineties and helped raise my mother and her siblings while my grandparents ran their mom-and-pop grocery store. my great-grandmother was born sometime during or at the end of the civil war in pine bluff, arkansas, where her mother had moved with her husband. he seems to have been quite a character, sometimes described in family stories as a doctor and at other times as an itinerant musician. probably he was a peddler of snake oil and attracted potential customers by playing the fiddle. apparently, he came through my great-great-grandmother's rural community, and she fell in love with him, leaving her home and moving with him to pine bluff in central arkansas. one night when he was out carousing, she loaded up my great-grandmother and her siblings along with all the possessions that she could on an open wagon and left him to return to her family in the southwestern part of the state. she took her maiden name back, and my great-grandmother never saw her father again. like her mother, my great-grandmother raised a large family on her own. my great-grandfather suddenly passed away leaving her to keep her family fed and to hold onto the family farm during the difficult period that followed the end of reconstruction in the former confederate states, a task at which she succeeded with a great deal of grit.
as i think of what my ancestors accomplished and of their courage in leaving their settled lives in the eastern usa, i am filled with admiration for them. they were imperfect people who participated in the social ills of their day. at the same time, they were devoted to their families and willing to endure great hardships to provide more opportunities for their children and grandchildren. it must have been very difficult to carve out a living in a new place that was largely wilderness. i am grateful to them for having such courage and for passing their legacy down to me and their other descendants.
may we honor those who have gone before us and seek to learn more about them. may we learn from their accomplishments and from their mistakes. may we seek to pass on our heritage to our children. may we value the knowledge of our past as we seek to live in the present. shalom.
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