An Amazing Mixture

You can’t research your family history without reaching the conclusion at some point that each of us is an amazing mixture of different heritages, cultures, and nationalities. The names that have combined to bring us to the point of our place in history, come from all walks of life, and from many different countries. After centuries of marriages, the bloodline changes to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable. If good records are not kept, it can get to the point of not being able to trace the family history at all. I have personally come up against parts of my family history where I am at a dead end, and all I can do is hope that somewhere along the way, someone had some information that they will input into their history, so I can continue on with my line.

When I think about the different nationalities that have come together to bring about the person who is me, I am in awe of how it can all mix and still keep some semblance of who the original people were. Of course, there is a definite loss of the cultures, languages, and homelands of the prior generations, but the bloodline doesn’t really lose its history, it just becomes somewhat like muddy waters. You can’t easily see all the details of each part of what makes up the whole, but you know that it is there…somewhere.

I find it so interesting to look at all of my ancestors. There were some amazing characters in my history. Famous names mingle with not so famous names throughout my history, and it makes me wonder how these different people ever got together in the first place, but then most people aren’t famous until later in life. Some are born into it, but many achieve greatness through the course of their life, and many live their entire lives with their greatness known only to their lives ones and close friends.

I believe that no matter who we are or where we come from, whether we are famous or not, we are an amazing mixture of all that is in our ancestry. No matter what country we now live in, most of us have come from many nations to arrive where we are. It is what makes us who we are, and it is why each of us is unique. Even siblings can take more of their line from opposite parents and thereby come more along the lines of that parent than the other. It is an amazing mixture.