When I was a young boy, say around eleven or twelve, I would occasionally ask my mother about our family history.
See, I had never met any other relative - not a single grandparent, no aunts or uncles or cousins, and of course my father had been long gone, so I never had anyone in my life (up to that point) who would spin stories about the good ol' days and what wild and rambunctious or mild and milquetoast people we had been descended from - no one had ever told me anything about who I was descended from or any of the particulars about my ancestry.
If I remember correctly, my curiosity had been sparked by a number of friends of mine going to visit grandparents, or having grandparents come visit them, and the subsequent stories those friends would tell of their grandparents being from far off lands such as Arizona, Florida, Mexico, or even Alabama.
Mother dear was tight lipped about our genealogy, sharing only that my genetics were an admixture of Lithuanian on her side and Scandinavian, German & French on my father's side.
When pushed for more details my mom told me that her father (my maternal grandfather) had been a "dumb hunk" coal miner & her mother (my maternal grandmother) had a beautiful singing voice but had died shortly after my mother's 13th birthday, that she was one of four siblings (she had a sister and two brothers, who all lived on the east coast and whom I never met) and that she grew up as poor as dirt during the great depression.
Oddly though, my mom also made a point of telling me that we were descended from the last people of Europe to be Christianized, and that our Lithuanian ancestors had worshipped the morning star.
The only details I learned about my father's side were that he was born in Northern California where his family still resided, that his side was somehow related to the Firestone family, and that he had remarried a number of times after he had divorced my mom.
Oh, and that he had become a sheriff in Clear Lake, California after leaving the Navy.
It wasn't until I was in my early adulthood that I began to dig for more information about my ancestry.
I met my first relatives outside of my immediate family, an uncle (who was my fathers only full brother (my paternal grandmother had married and divorced several times, and my father had a number of half siblings) and my uncle's wife and their children - it was (and still is, sorta) so weird to suddenly have an uncle and aunt and five cousins.
Looking into my roots was not something I was all in on a'la Alex Haley. It was something I did (and still do) sporadically. If I was near anywhere close to where any of my relatives lived I would pay a visit, but I never set out specifically to visit those areas - I made visits to Hazleton and DuBois, Pa, when I was in Pennsylvania on business, and I made visits to Stockton and Clearlake, Ca when I was in Northern California for similar reasons.
Heck, the only reason I ever met my uncle and his family was because I was stationed in Denver and that's where they lived.
However, with the advent of the Internet and the development of readily accessible DNA analysis, I did become more interested in getting better informed as to my genetic make up. In the past twenty years I've learned tons about my ethnic heritage and it has all been interesting.
Last night though I had light shined on one of the more esoteric questions I've had regarding my maternal lineage, and that is, what did my mom mean when she said we were descended from the last Europeans to be Christianized?
Last night I got a few answers and developed a whole new subset of questions. Last night I watched a documentary titled "Baltic Tribes: the Last Pagans of Europe."
The documentary was made in 2018 by a couple of Latvian filmmakers, Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele (the Abele name should have an accent mark over the A, but I don't know how to make that happen).
The one hour and forty three minute film covers a lot of ground and though the narration by what sounds like AI generated English translations of the original female and male narrators is somewhat dull, the story does shed some light on the religious beliefs and practices that my mother alluded to, and on the Christian Europeans efforts to extinguish those Pagan beliefs and practices.
Now I haven't had the opportunity to fact check anything but the most rudimentary details of the documentary, such as the geography of the setting (most of the movie was filmed in Lithuania) and the history of the main players such as the Prussians, Danes, Samogitians, Curonians (brutal lot, them), Latvians and Lithuanians, but so far what was stated and depicted is holding up to scrutiny.
Which means I'm probably not descended from the most civilized of peoples.
But you know, that was then, my ancestors didn't have the benefit of a fine education and knowledge of the more genteel arts.
No comments:
Post a Comment