Explore Your Own History

I recently became acquainted with the genealogy-tracing website Ancestry.com.  Fortunatly, I have a well-documented family history chock-full of people seemingly obsessed with recording all of their minutia into the public record for the last thousand  years.  Although I already knew that I was related to the original pilgrims, John and Priscilla Alden, and that five of my ancestors fought in the revolutionary war, I did not know that I was related to several medieval knights and noblemen, and that my family is associated with 10 different castles located all over England, Wales, Scotland, France, and Germany. It was fascinating to see all of the first names like Rufus, Comfort, Theophilus, and Saphronia that were used regularly for nearly 300 years, only to disappear several generations ago.  




Rockland Female Institute

 Using Ancestry.com, I can now see how I am directly connected to all of these people and places through time — and ultimately how we are all connected.  I have a new appreciation and understanding of the efforts and toil that people suffered before me, and how they were all essential to the existence of me and my future generations.

Fittingly, for Women’s History Month, I discovered that I am related to the Reverend D.L. Mansfield, the headmaster of the Rockland Female Institute who in 1873 caused a “sensation” by bringing four young ladies down to the election polls to cast their ballots and “test the question” of women’s suffrage in Nyack — 47 years before the 19th Amendment was ratified.

The oldest ancestor I could locate, with any documented certainty from one of the twelve lines I was tracing, was Lady Fredegunde (died 760), great-grand-daughter of Chlodia, one of the first Frankish kings who was rumored by legend to have been sired by a quinotaur.  That’s where I stopped — I draw the line at being related to mythical creatures.  I think the further back you go, the sketchier things become. It will be interesting to see where the other lines go.

For additional information on local history and genealogy use your library card to access the Rockland County Ramapo-Catskill Library System.  Resources include Britannica's Annals of American History, The Hudson River Valley Heritage digital collection, HRVH Historical Newspapers database, Ancestry Plus,

ProQuest Historical New York Times database, the Rockland County Messenger, and Biographies in Context databases.   Happy hunting!!