Ancestors, Real and Invented
Okay, so you know that recent Michigan trip I keep mentioning? It was a different sort of trip than usual, and I'm going to present it in an unusual way. We took the trip as part of a genealogical exploration of one of my ancestral lines, so for the next couple of weeks, I'll be talking a lot about where I originate and some of the people who produced me. But I'll start with a 30-plus-year-old picture of a batch of people who have little to do with Michigan.
These are the folks who actually raised me. I don't like using my real identity on the internet, so I won't tell you their full names. My little play on the name of a movie star gunslinger has worked well enough as a fake flickr surname, though, so that's what I'll call these people. This is a photo of the Midwestwood family, taken in 1983 or '84 for a church directory, I think. The parents, Becky and Milton, sit in the middle with the baby on their lap. The middle kid stands over on the left, looking a little creepy. And the big-haired blond kid standing off to the right with an expression stuck somewhere between confusion and annoyance is the ten-year-old version of me, Clint Midwestwood, oldest of the Midwestwood children.
There's a fun fact about that family I've alluded to several times in the past: only three of the five people in this image are related by birth. That dark haired kid on the left is the only child born to Milton and Becky to make it out of the hospital. (There were three other babies who didn't live longer than a day.) The other two kids, me and the little guy, were both adopted as infants. And it only gets more complicated from there, as that baby and I are genetically related, too. Biologically, the kid is the child of one of my biological sisters, who gave birth to him when she was 16. She figured since my parents already had one her brothers, they might as well have her son, too. I used to have a lot of fun with family pictures by pointing out that the only person I actually share any genes with here is the black kid.
But there's a down side to all this for somebody who likes to compartmentalize things the way I do. Thanks to my wife, who is really good at researching things, I've developed an interest in genealogy. But this leads directly into the question of which genealogical line I follow. I've got two options giving me twice as many ancestors as everybody else. I can follow the line of the Midwestwoods, the people who raised me and from whom the law says I originate. Or I can follow the genetic line that leads to a bunch of people with names like Prout or Frazier or Goudreau or, if you can believe it, Waubojeeg.
At one point in the recent Michigan trip, Robin asked me which line I felt the greater connection to. That's sort of a difficult question to answer, as it hints at a lot of nurture-nature fights. My personal experience tells me those fights mostly wind up a draw, and neither really dominates. I consider both lines "real." They're just real in different ways. Though I'm not genetically related to the people in this photo, Milton and Becky are my real and true parents, and I've never been tempted to think otherwise. And since my parents' ancestral lines made them who they are and my parents made me who I am, I am as much a product of their lines as they are. But the physical stuff that embodies me, the blood and bones and tendency for cancer and bouts of depression and fuzzy hair, that comes from a mix of Michiganders and Mississippians. My love of writing and photography and my urge to over-analyze things probably comes from there, too. So that line's as real as the other.
The genetic line is the one I'll explore in this set, focusing on the lineage of my biological mother. She came from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as did practically every one of my forebears in that line going back at least 300 years. Here's a few of their stories.
Ancestors, Real and Invented
Okay, so you know that recent Michigan trip I keep mentioning? It was a different sort of trip than usual, and I'm going to present it in an unusual way. We took the trip as part of a genealogical exploration of one of my ancestral lines, so for the next couple of weeks, I'll be talking a lot about where I originate and some of the people who produced me. But I'll start with a 30-plus-year-old picture of a batch of people who have little to do with Michigan.
These are the folks who actually raised me. I don't like using my real identity on the internet, so I won't tell you their full names. My little play on the name of a movie star gunslinger has worked well enough as a fake flickr surname, though, so that's what I'll call these people. This is a photo of the Midwestwood family, taken in 1983 or '84 for a church directory, I think. The parents, Becky and Milton, sit in the middle with the baby on their lap. The middle kid stands over on the left, looking a little creepy. And the big-haired blond kid standing off to the right with an expression stuck somewhere between confusion and annoyance is the ten-year-old version of me, Clint Midwestwood, oldest of the Midwestwood children.
There's a fun fact about that family I've alluded to several times in the past: only three of the five people in this image are related by birth. That dark haired kid on the left is the only child born to Milton and Becky to make it out of the hospital. (There were three other babies who didn't live longer than a day.) The other two kids, me and the little guy, were both adopted as infants. And it only gets more complicated from there, as that baby and I are genetically related, too. Biologically, the kid is the child of one of my biological sisters, who gave birth to him when she was 16. She figured since my parents already had one her brothers, they might as well have her son, too. I used to have a lot of fun with family pictures by pointing out that the only person I actually share any genes with here is the black kid.
But there's a down side to all this for somebody who likes to compartmentalize things the way I do. Thanks to my wife, who is really good at researching things, I've developed an interest in genealogy. But this leads directly into the question of which genealogical line I follow. I've got two options giving me twice as many ancestors as everybody else. I can follow the line of the Midwestwoods, the people who raised me and from whom the law says I originate. Or I can follow the genetic line that leads to a bunch of people with names like Prout or Frazier or Goudreau or, if you can believe it, Waubojeeg.
At one point in the recent Michigan trip, Robin asked me which line I felt the greater connection to. That's sort of a difficult question to answer, as it hints at a lot of nurture-nature fights. My personal experience tells me those fights mostly wind up a draw, and neither really dominates. I consider both lines "real." They're just real in different ways. Though I'm not genetically related to the people in this photo, Milton and Becky are my real and true parents, and I've never been tempted to think otherwise. And since my parents' ancestral lines made them who they are and my parents made me who I am, I am as much a product of their lines as they are. But the physical stuff that embodies me, the blood and bones and tendency for cancer and bouts of depression and fuzzy hair, that comes from a mix of Michiganders and Mississippians. My love of writing and photography and my urge to over-analyze things probably comes from there, too. So that line's as real as the other.
The genetic line is the one I'll explore in this set, focusing on the lineage of my biological mother. She came from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as did practically every one of my forebears in that line going back at least 300 years. Here's a few of their stories.