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All the thinking, believing, and understanding has pretty much been done by this boy who was born to two lines…each very similar…and each totally different. The mix seems hopelessly one of oil vs. water, or dogs vs. cats. But the two lines came into focus in 1911 when my father was born to a lady of upper-caste full of Massachusetts and New Yorker magnates and industrialists. By the time the baby of 1911 was ready to quit the United States Army, 12th Cavalry (Mounted) in 1933 and get a real job, he made a play for a girl from Tennessee…eastern Tennessee…from a place named Winchester.
Before long, this young ex-horse soldier had started up his own grove care operation in Hidalgo County, Texas on the Mexican border very near the Rio Grande. His parents had moved into that area during the height of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917. And, oh yes…he girl he married was the prettiest girl in Edinburg, Texas High School …and he establishing his business interests, a marriage, and a home in quick order. That all began in 1934.
For my father, there is the paternal line that came and dwelled in Massachusetts, coming directly out of London and close-by places in that vicinity. Bishops and vicars, men of the Parliament, titled people who came to good position in the "colonies" far to the west of Mother England all were mixed into a proper society. These were people who managed the people of the rough and tumble times of settling an immense stretch of geography that no true Englishman could have possibly considered in a single glance, or even a million glances.
After four or five generations of the establishment of Anglo and similar settlement across the Atlantic Ocean these Brits had established a new sub-culture…one that dealt with Indians and industry and a new form of long-distance trade . They pertained to those people commonly referred to as "New Englanders" or "Hudson River people" who had "made well" during the 1640 through 1800 period. By establishing clans, social interrelationships, and business connections these folks landed themselves into a plush life and a new culture.
Along with them, and about the same time, came yeomen, well to do and not so well to do people of southeastern England. These folks were mixed with a not-insignificant number of lesser pretenders to title (those born after the first-born of an aristocratic English family). They tended to prefer the warmer Southern areas of the "New World"…places that would soon sport names of both English, Scottish, and other Britannic types as well as the hallmarks of the natives of the "New World". So, in the southern part of the newly discovered continent, parcels of great extension of lands (by English standard) had names like Carolina and Virginia and Louisiana. Those formal names mixed together in that new wonderland parcels of huge dimension that came to be named Alabama, or Tennessee, or even Mississippi.
To a large extent, those were the people of my mother's side. Her family took to the waves in mainly after 1650 and before 1680. They entered into Virginia and then North Carolina with the intention of obtaining property and farming lands. They also could be found in the pursuit of merchandising…stores, saloons, way-stations for travellers going and coming by coach or stage and even breeding fine cows and horses. In the process they found themselves balancing things like relations with different Indians nations and groupings. They also had to deal with the reality of Black African slavery
Both of these family groupings came into the eastern edge of the continent at almost the same time, leaving the dull security of England for the risk and chance of gaining lucre and position in a place soon to be known throughout the World as America. Predictably, perhaps, these kindred people seemed to be compatible due to the similarity of the language, and of course the varied but similar forms of the Christian religion.
This great similarity would also come to include cultural irritants that would create great difficulties for the generations ahead.
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With the above very quick and very general overview of your humble writer's somewhat distant beginnings we would like to move somewhat quickly, and somewhat clumsily down the road that will lead us to our purpose. One can readily understand that the southern Brits were accustomed to warmer climate provided by the oceanic Gulf Stream warmth, than those further north in the Kingdom.
A small point, to be sure, and one very obvious has generally been overlooked when Americans think about the early settlement of "our home continent". Southern Brits seemed to gravitate to the balmy "down South" territory. Brits of the "northern persuasion" seemed to generally be willing accept the dull, grey, and very cold winters of those latitudes closer to the North Pole.
These two bodies of Caucasian sorts had problems with the aboriginals of the new land. There were elements of friction and violence as well as compatibility and even friendships and intermarriage. When all was said and done, all the begetting and all the fretting, the establishment of lifestyles, of establishing families and clans did certainly help in the conversion of North America into a driving force for the development of a civilisation, a set of adjacent sub-nations, and a dynamic caused by Negro persons being brought into a Caucasian and Aboriginal mix of affairs.
There was so much diversity demanding conformity…so many colours of people, languages, accents, and pursuits…that it had formed its own Universe-apart. The cultural scene in the "New World" became at once a peculiar quirk within the human race, a possible danger due to the ever-present dangers presented by weather, and armed contention of and by tribes and settlers. Conflicts, even those between overlapping Protestant and Roman Catholic and Anglican dogmas and traditions, provided more sociological edge and cultural tensions among the of the peoples of such a sundry ancestry.
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| A common rural Anglican Church circa 1350 AD _________________ |
Bunches could also be found in and around the fabled precincts of Nottingham. And, another large batch…very large…inhabited East Anglia, on the other side of the Noble Island. This all conflicted with my mother's side, who could be found more in abundance in Sussex and Jute. And, while there were real and imagined differences between the type of folks above described, it is true that they did have their quirks and peculiarities.
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Suffice now to say that there is an inexhaustible amount of lore and legend that can be drawn from the English theatre, both in general and as it pertains to the Newton, Christian, etc. family lines. But such dull revelations can quickly bore even the most enthusiastic genealogist.
It should suffice to note that my parents married, and produced three male off-spring. Each was similar…and each was different…one from the other. Before the Revolution, we know that Lord Admiral Howe contributed to our gene pool…and before the first efforts to populate what would become North America…we had various and sundry Bishops, counts, viscounts, and a Duke or two in our lineage. This is not the place where I would choose to begin such a recitation.
It would be necessary, however, to confess or reveal (as one might wish) that our purity of ethnicity is a bit clumsy to describe. Such is the case due to the fact that some character by the name of George Frederick Limbaugh (1737 - 1815) came into America as a child and wound up being a soldier for the uppity colonials in their fight for Independence from King George III.
George Frederick had settled as a child with his family in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania. As fate would have it, he joined the forces of the American cause against the British Crown, and served as second in command of a largely Germanic artillery unit during the time of the Duress in Valley Forge. He served heroically, and during his long life, finally managed to settle and forever remain in Cape Girardeau, Missouri (a wondrous clash of German and French and Indian names all crammed into one little space on a River known as the Mississippi). And, yes Virginia, Mississippi is a real word, drawn from the Algonquin Indian language, "miss sippi", mangled by the French, and finished off by the English.
We shall attempt to finish this article in the coming hours and days, and then continue our life-commentary now that I am restored a bit and now that various of our family's little bumps-in-the-road have been fixed. Thanks to all for your comments and following.
EL GRINGO VIEJO
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