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Oh my goodness. In the last 2-3 days, a whole bunch of things fell together, and I've ended up with a whole lot more Tozer history than I ever expected.
Um. I think I technically qualify for DAR. O_O
I also got some Barlow goodness in the mail from Howard's grandmother, which I haven't finished transcribing into Ancestry yet.
But holy crap. I've gone from thinking my family were nobodys from nowhere to finding out we helped settle the NY/PA border. And that's after we came over much earlier, pre-Revolutionary War.
Ho. Lee. Crap.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-15 11:26 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-11-16 03:40 am (UTC)From:As I texted you earlier, I have no idea what DAR does, but I'm very jazzed, possibly even dazzled, that I even know for certain that I could.
To elaborate, growing up, all of us on my mom's side knew where we came from, so to speak. We knew that all our maternal grandparents came from the same small village in Austria. We all knew about slivovitz (prune/plum brandy), that it tasted awful but all of us of age ( ;) ) do at least one shot every Christmas Eve. We know we have "cousins" in Austria who have come to visit, and my grandparents went to Austria to visit family there. It's a very rooted, comforting sort of feeling.
My dad's side has been a big mystery. "England, and maybe Scandinavia?" are really vague responses to "Where is your family from, Daddy?" in comparison. I now know it's because my dad almost certainly didn't know for certain about the Tozers, and the little we knew about the Stokes was more in the realm of family mythology than facts -- even before the Danish-descended g-grandmother started losing her memory, by all account she was very reluctant to talk about her husband and his family. (I wonder if that might be partially due to the stigma of her being his second wife after he divorced the first one.)
Figuring out last night that there were Tozers in a direct line back in the early 1800s? Hey, that's pretty cool, and look, they were even in upstate NY back then! It's something concrete to be able to point to. Finding out less than 24 hours later that someone has already linked us back another 100+ years, to colonial New England and across the ocean to specific places in GB? ^%#*&^*%# MIND BLOWN!!! Not to mention being able to finally see where my branch links into the other Tozer histories I've seen reference to over the years. Not even knowing who my grandfather's parents were for a long time meant I always felt like we were "those other Tozers who don't quite belong." Now my dad's family is starting to populate my mind as real people, with their own stories that are just as important as Mom's family.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-16 04:06 am (UTC)From:http://dar.org/natsociety/faq.cfm#membership
Pity. Their loss. :P