Forebears

​I am amused by this week’s celebrity scandal alleging the wife of a star is of Spanish ethnicity rather than Bostonian. I guess she was born in Boston.  It made me wonder about my own forbearers and my mother’s search for them.  I remember her assertion when I was young, we were Scotch, Irish, and English.  Maybe Sir Frances Drake was in our line.  Then she was anxious to confirm some Swiss heritage on her father’s side. Sheltering-in-place for much of the past year gave my sister and I lots of time to search genealogy websites for our forebears.  I have enjoyed the research and putting the puzzle together; but ‘on a scale of 1 to 10’ the results have little effect on my life.
 
My description of myself: American with straight, mouse-brown-graying hair, very blue eyes, and skin with a tendency to freckle.  I will never be an exotic Spanish senorita!  I was born in a small hospital in western New York.  My parents are both from Western New York.  Their parents were from Western New York.  23 and Me has dubbed me as 53% British and Irish; 30% French and German; 6% Scandinavian and 11% anyone’s guess (or too close to call).  Hmmmmm I have never been to Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, or Scandinavia. I know nothing about Northern Europe I did not learn from high school world history.  I know all about being from western New York, the good and the bad.   
 
More important than all I inherited from my ancestors, I am a child of God, a fellow heir with Christ.  “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Romans 8:14-17 (ESV)