Introduce yourself

[samurai_sarah]

A bit belated, but here it goes:

Introduce yourself. Tell us how you got interested. And whatever else you feel comfortable sharing!

 

[Marmion]

I first got into history because , for one thing I have always been interested in History , and I wanted to learn more specifically about my ancestors role in historical events , and pay tribute to them .  More personally though , I had wanted to try to see if I could find any concrete evidence to back up this bit of family folklore passed along by an uncle of mine .  He had claimed that I had a great-great-great-great grandmother whom was a Native American , of the Crow nation . Well , upon doing extensive research , I found out that the closest ancestor whom fit the bill , was the wife of Conrad Weiser  , whom from what I have read somewhere was at one time thought by some reputable historians to have been a Mohawk , as until fairly recently her maiden name had been lost , and her children were said to have had bronze complected skin , and black hair , as an aside so had my late paternal grandmother , whom was their descendant .  

Quote

maiden name of his wife we have never found men- tioned ; nor has any one else, so far as we could learn. Were we open to gossip, we might give full heed to the current and somewhat romantic tradition, that Conrad Weiser had married a Mohawk Indian maiden. The invariable absence of her patronymic, coupled with the fact of his earlier and later residence among the Maqua people, constitutes the basis of the strange surmise. The fiict ( )r fancy, that the immediate descendants of the pair, had always been distinguished by straight raven-colored hair and a bronzed complexion, c^ime in as an after- thought, and served as a very handy support to the view agoing. It was mooted, too, that the primitive name, Eve^ was ominous of the conceived idea; and that it was designedly chosen, in order, on the one side, to 

ignore lier former Indian origin, and, on the other, to indicate lier incipient motherhood to a different race. It is not well to fly in the face of an old creed, if it is in any wise supported by reasonable credentials. Nevertheless, we hesitate not to write down Mrs. Anna Eve Weiser as a full-blooded Palatinate woman. It is easy to account for the rise and onward flow of the story of Conrad Weiser's Mohawk wife. His silence touch- ing her patronymic made it necessary for his posterity to go in search of it. As Indians wear no family cog- nomen, the notion that she miglit have been an Indian lay nearer, and proved easier to harbor, than to success- fully ferret out the lost name. The organ for marvel- ous conception, besides, is large in many ; and nothing proves more attractive, than Indian romance, in propor- tion to the distance exactly.

https://archive.org/stream/lifeofjohnconrad00weiser/lifeofjohnconrad00weiser_djvu.txt  However , now her surname , and the identity of her patents has since been uncovered .  So while I had ended up refuting that which I had set out to prove , I still have found an interesting story anyway .  Plus there were other interesting ancestors I have found as well .  So I am satisfied with my results .