Introduction

A Summers/Murray Family History

Unfortunately, I didn’t begin my genealogical exploration until I retired. I had thought about it before then, of course, and had even been excited to hear family lore at family gatherings and read about any genealogical discoveries made by my relatives. But until I had more time to do research and commit the time, it was all just another of those unexplored interests.

Once I had the time, genealogy quickly became a primary item on my newly opened schedule. All those other items on my pre-retirement to-do list would just have to wait a little longer. I dove in and seemed to make rapid progress with the tree. It only took a little while, however, for me to come to the realization that there was one big downside to waiting until you have the time to start your family history. They are all gone.

Sadly, all our direct ancestors had passed on by the time I retired and wanted to do our Family History. There was nobody to talk to. All the little personal stories, family lore and memories were gone. I had gathered a little bit of history through the years. Two of my cousins on my father’s side of the tree had published a good family tree and there were several handwritten lists of family members passed down through the generations. My contemporaries all remember little snippets of their experience with the extended family and there is some shared family lore, but nobody was there to confirm those recollections. Of course, I wish that I had talked to my grandparents or parents more about their early lives, their parents’ lives, and the lives of those around them. Alas, too late.

And, of course, there were the pictures. Out of context, mostly unlabeled and many unidentifiable, but each one enticingly suggesting a story of its own. Everybody seemed to have a box of them. Finding a new picture from a distant family event in one of those boxes was always a treat but often there was the frustration of not having a context for the picture.

So, you are left with the records, all the breadcrumbs left behind by your ancestors as they progressed through their lives. For some of your Ancestors there were lots of them to look at, pick through and ponder. For others, the trail of evidence was faint at best. To make matters worse the further back in time your research goes, the harder it gets. Each generation back, there are twice as many people and, especially before the Civil War, many fewer records to draw from. Luckily, I waited long enough that I could benefit from the Digital Age. Many of these records are available online now, through digital archives (usually for a fee) or posted by private enthusiasts. But they are just records and, although they provide clues to the whereabouts, dates, activities and even relationships of your ancestors over time, they offer few clues as to their undocumented life experiences.

Let’s face it, you can never hope to reveal the intimate moments of your ancestor’s lives without someone having recorded them at the time. Lacking that precious data, the only way you might hope to expand your understanding of their life experiences is to look at the history they lived through. My hope is that with this report, we might thus find a way to deduce further dimensions of their lives.

Historical Summary

For purposes of this work, I am going to restrict my view of World History to that of Europe and the Americas after 1492, when “Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue”. My Wife and I both have had our DNA tested and all our ethnicity is centered in and around Northern Europe (Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Scandinavia) and would, therefore, not have had any contact with the Western Hemisphere which was isolated and remote from the European continent until the Columbus Voyage. This, of course, doesn’t count Viking excursions to North America around 1000AD, recently discovered DNA evidence of South American contact with Polynesian explorers around 1200AD, countless, undocumented, coastline incursions by the extensive European fishing fleet and even possible Chinese exploration.

I have also not included the History of the Native people of North America, prior to European contact, partly because we haven’t identified any DNA kinship with that population and so there wouldn’t be any connection to the Europeans at that time, but also because I am not personally familiar enough with that History to give it the attention it deserves. I do plan to eventually include important parts of their post-Columbian experience. It should be there. If you would like to get a good picture of what the Western Hemisphere might have been like before Columbus, pick up a copy of the book “1491” by Charles C. Mann. It is a revelation on many levels. The American History that we read in school is mostly a history of European Exploration and Settlement, written by Europeans, and begins at this time. Presumably, few if any, of my Northern European ancestors would have been aware of the people of the Western Hemisphere before that time.

The first one hundred years of European History in The Americas, following Columbus’ voyage, were primarily years of conquest, subjugation, exploitation, and genocide on the part of the European Conquerors (mostly Spanish at the time) towards the Native Peoples. In many areas, European diseases nearly obliterated the aboriginal people, and the surviving populace was pressed into slavery or forced servitude so that the conquerors could rapidly extract any valuable resources that could be found or grown. Exploitive Colonies were established in the South by the Spanish and in the North by the French.

Throughout this time Northern European nations had surely become aware of the New World but other than the fishing fleet, explorers, and the occasional Pirate, were curiously not present. Other than the unlikely possibility of my ancestors being one of those ephemeral visitors, they could have only known about but likely would still not have visited The New World.

However, at this point (about 1585), the British began to make serious attempts towards establishing a bulkhead in North America. Hereafter, Northern Europe would have finally established a presence in the New World. and there would be a tiny, but increasing, chance that after this time my ancestors might have had an opportunity to set foot on the North American continent.

For approximately the next one hundred years various European powers juggled for power along the east coast of North America. Colonies were formed by several European nations. Treaties were signed and wars were fought between these Colonies, with other foreign powers and with the Native Tribes, sometimes more than one at a time. Colonies changed hands and borders moved. Eventually, England controlled most of the colonies along the eastern North American coast, south of the Great Lakes and north of Florida, and these became part of the English Colonial Empire. England went on to control these colonies for most of the 18th Century, finally, losing that control in a War for Independence culminating in the formation of the United States.

1784 – In January of 1784, the Treaty of Paris was ratified. The Revolutionary War ended and the United States became an official entity.  Residents at the time (mostly British citizens) became citizens of the new United States. 

At the time of British arrival in North America, I am quite confident that all our ancestors were living in Europe. As it happens, most of our family lines (about sixty in total at the time) from both of our trees were living in the British Colonies in America by the time of the American Revolution. There were a couple of families that immigrated in the 19 Century but most migrated during the time of British rule and became citizens at the end of the War. By the time of our marriage both of our families were living on the west coast of the United States of America. What a journey our families have made. In the following Sections, we are going to look at that journey and those that made it.

Family Histories

In the early 90s I picked up a book by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe titled “Generations.” It laid out the historical timeline of what would become the United States from the British colonization of North America to present times. The timeline was broken into 5 similarly patterned cycles of roughly 90 years (about four generations or a human lifetime). The Authors attributed the dynamics of these social cycles to the social interactions between the various generations born into them. In general, each cycle ends with a triumph over a major crisis, so the next cycle begins with a euphoric high (optimistic) period (one human generation?), followed by a spiritual awakening, a period of unraveling (pessimistic) and finally another crisis, completing the cycle. According to the authors, we are in the latter stages of the fifth cycle now. This includes all British colonization in North America and the history of the United States (about 435 years). Whether or not the patterns result from some subtle, scientific, social mechanics, the theory presents a reasonable model for the major periods in American History.

For convenience, I am going to build my Family Histories on a generational framework, mostly using Strauss and Howe’s structure and timing as a reference for the theory or mechanics underlying it. I am not going to attempt to address the relationships of my generational cohorts, for instance, or the dynamics of the unfolding cycles. The generations will be my generations, of course, rather than the statistical cohorts envisioned by the authors. If you are interested you can read Strauss and Howe’s “Generations” or a follow up book, “Fourth Turning,” which concentrates on the present cycle that we are now living through.

The Strauss and Howe Generational Cycles in American History are as follows:

1. The Colonial Cycle (1584 – 1690)
2. The Revolutionary Cycle (1690 – 1784)
3. The Civil War Cycle (1784- 1865)
4. The World War Cycle (1865 – 1946)
5. The Present Cycle (1946 – now)

Initially, I won’t concentrate on the years following Columbus’ arrival in the Caribbean up to the British landing in North America (1492-1584). There will be little or no non-European ancestral connections in this period, anyway, but it eventually should be addressed due to its importance as part of the European legacy in North America and would have been on the minds of many of our ancestors, even though they were all still living in Europe.

I will include the two cycles of the Pre-Revolutionary War period as much as possible. There obviously is less information from this period and what I have will be very spotty. The bulk of the work, therefore, will concentrate on the 3 cycles following the Revolutionary War and leading up to the Present (1784-2024), the 236-year lifetime of the United States of America.

At some point, I might also include some discussion about our own future too, as there are many major challenges presenting themselves today that could never have been imagined in the past, and that future generations will have to face. I think, eventually, we will need to talk about those issues.

In any case, the results of all this can be found in Our Family Story. Have fun.