AN IMMIGRANT'S GENEALOGY

This morning I learned that my grandfather's grandfather was born in Westphalia, Germany, he in 1823, and his wife, Mary, in 1853. It is the first time I knew my great grandfather's name, who died before I was born, John Henry, Johann Heinrich Brink. His wife, my great grandmother, I knew. She died in my late teens. Both were born in Lawrence, Kansas, where, evidently, both families settled. I remember her in childhood, Kansas City KS, old dark house with big, heavy furniture. A round dining table on a stand in the middle. Pictures around the walls of dogs playing cards. In the late Forties, early Fifties, the pictures were ancient-seeming. Her name was Anna Schmidt Brink (grandma Brink), daughter of George and Johanna Flosser Schmidt. My suspicion is they went to America from someplace other than Westphalia. I vaguely recall being told in childhood that one was from northern Germany and the other from southern Germany. Westphalia is western Germany, bordering on Netherlands and Belgium. My guess is that George and Johanna came from another part of Germany. I thought, before, it was my great grandparents made the crossing, but it was their parents. 

This explains why, when in Germany, everyone I said I don't speak German to, said, "Yes you do," with an annoyed air like I was attempting a prank. The look that says, don't try to fool me. Westphalia fits my missing link in the DNA reading from ancestry.com. It has my physical history, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, England, Ireland and Sweden. I'm white. I knew rumor of all but Netherlands and Belgium. Borders have a way of changing over centuries, people move across borders for work and marry across borders. I'd guess Westphalia has a large population of Dutch and Belgian ancestry that goes centuries back. Possibly even Dutch and Belgian influence in some of the architecture. I vaguely recall possibly a brother of my grandfather, who went by Dutch. I wondered if it meant Netherlands Dutch or German Deutsch. Probably an Americanization of Deutsch. I'd wondered all my life what state in Germany my grandfather's people went to the New World from, to land in the new Kansas territory not long after the Civil War. My other grandfather's people went to Kansas from Ninemile, Tennessee, in the Sequatchie valley of the Cumberland Plateau, where they farmed for several generations on good soil, sixty miles north of Chattanooga.      

This rush of genealogy info came in the mail from my mother. Last week on the phone I asked what she knew about her grandfather, her mother's dad, Milton Forster. I'd only recently learned his first name, which set me to wondering more about him. His name was John Milton Forster. Oh how I  hated Paradise Lost in school. A John Milton on grandmother's side and a John Henry on grandfather's side. The name, John Milton, tells the English origin of the name Forster. He was a brick and stone mason. Mother told me of some houses I remember from childhood that he did the rock work on. He died a decade before I came along. No information on where he was born or his parents, only that he was born in 1869. He married my great grandmother, Ettie Zerilda Mann, in Nevada, Missouri, 1897. I remember her from childhood, her long, thin hair, remember loving her like crazy, grandma Forster, and mourning her death when I was 14. The name, Mann, has a German ring to it, Thomas Mann. Might be some more German blood through her. John Milton Forster is definitely English, and Protestant. Forster would be an English name, going by EM Forster, the early Twentieth Century writer. Must-be English is as far as I can get with the Forsters.  

I learned about a decade ago of my Worthington origins. original multiple-great grandfather left northwestern England, Morley in Cheshire county. He left in exile for being a Quaker. Must have been some seriously divisive religion politics going around at the time. He went to Dublin with his wife, Alice Taylor, worked three years to gather money for the crossing, and went to the new Quaker colony, Pennsylvania, 1714. A month crossing on a sailing ship. He kept an inn in the town and a farm in the country. He applied for and received a land grant of 3,000 acres in what is now Orange county, Virginia, where he died. His heir who carried my line went to Botetourt county, north of Roanoke, and as generations went by, on to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, down to Ninemile, Bledsoe County, Tennessee, where they stayed a few generations. After the Civil War, the whole next generation went west. A few generations later, my parachute landed me in the Central Blue Ridge, the same culture as my Tennessee grandpa grew up in. He passed the culture unknowingly to my dad, who passed it to me. My grandmother's people came from Pulaski county, eastern Kentucky. This explains why I felt like I had come home to my real home as I became acquainted with mountain culture in the people I knew. It was already in me. It felt like I had found my people. And the hillbillies became my people over time. I'm grateful for every step along the path that brought me here.  

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THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE BY JAMES REBANKS

robert therrien

One morning listening to the Diane Rehm radio interview show on NPR, I heard a man from northern England, James Rebanks, talk about his life working sheep in a sheep herding family of some centuries in the same location, the county Cumbria, bordering Scotland. He had written a book, The Shepherd's Life, recently published. He caught my attention for being from the northern part of England, where my namesake ancestors lived at Morley, Cheshire county, one county between Cumbria and Cheshire. The Worthington coat of arms has three pitchforks, I love it, known for cattle farmers. I don't know what kind of work my ancestor did who left for the new world, only that he was exiled for being a Quaker, went to Dublin, Ireland, a few years and on to the Quaker Pennsylvania colony, crossing in the month of August, 1714. He was 51. His kids ranged from 30 down to childhood. Nearly all of them died and his wife died fifteen years later. He remarried, started a new round of kids, applied for and received a 3,000 acre land grant in Orange County, Virginia, 1734. He built a new house and died a year later, the age I am now. He surely was a tough old knot. If wisdom comes through suffering, he died a wise man, and likely believed himself a fool. A Quaker bonded to the faith by the trials of his exile.   

robert therrien

I listened closely to James Rebanks talk about his part of the world, best known as the Lake Country of Wordsworth. I wanted to know about the landscape, how the people live. He said his emphasis in the writing is on how the people have lived there for multiple generations. He chose to work the family farm instead of going to the city for a job that pays. I wondered how it was he spoke like somebody with a better command of the language than a farmer. He went to Oxford. And chose to stay at home and work with the sheep. Reminds me of a fourth cousin who lives at Ninemile, Tennessee, went to Vanderbilt, came home and worked as a butcher. And there is I, who went to College of Charleston and then to the mountains to work a farm. I felt appreciation for where Redbanks was coming from, I understood him and he was giving me descriptions of the region of England I was curious to learn about. I made a note of his name and the book's title. Going by awareness of how each county in the mountains has its own personality in the people, I imagine it would be even more pronounced in a place that goes back to Neolithic. I'm guessing the culture would be about the same but for personality differences from county to county, like kids in a large family. 

robert therrien

I put the title on the wish list at amazon for next book order. Ordered it with the Philip Glass memoir, which had to be read first. This morning I opened The Shepherd's Life and read the first two pages. The writing pulls me into it by its own beauty. I can tell already I'll enjoy every page of his book. I see that he is going to tell me what I want to know about the region, the way of life, the history, what the people are like, the customs, beliefs. Maybe I'll learn why Quakers were run out. I can feel it that his is one of those books I hold dear, like Laurens van der Post's, Lost World of the Kalahari, Paul Zweig's, Three Journeys, Julio Cortazar's collection of stories, All Fires The Fire, just to name the first ones to come to mind. The memory these titles trigger feels good like the memory of a dog that died thirty years ago. Reading the writing of Patrick White of Australia, I am in direct touch with his mind, his thinking. This is someone across the earth I could never have known, but would like to have in my circle of friends, someone to know. But I don't need to know him in person to know him directly in his mind composing a story and characters. I don't need to know him to know the most interesting thing there is to know about him, his beautiful writing. 

robert therrien

Over a period of around ten years I read new fiction coming out of mainland China, read some good writers, read some biographies and histories, became familiar with how the Chinese people have lived through the 20th Century of their history, saw a long list of Chinese films for visuals and well told stories. Liking to read subtitles gives access to films from everyplace on earth. Had I chosen a life of not reading, I'd have missed Lawrence Durrell's, Alexandria Quartet, Naguib Mahfouz's, Cairo Trilogy, Chekhov, Turgenev, 20th Century American poetry. These are first ones to pop up. Reading is the greatest enjoyment of my life and a good source for learning whatever I want to learn about. Like when I wanted to know about China's history, I found a good, one volume history at amazon. I don't know what to feel about people who don't read. I know a world of entertainment that voids television by being so much more interesting. I have had times in the past when I felt a degree of sadness for them, but realized they don't want to and have their own curiosities and experiences that are at least equally valid. So I don't feel anything like sorrow about non-readers anymore. It's a matter of one's own choice. 

robert therrien himself

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