[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@zilker.net.
[ For more information, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html
-------
Laurel --
I like the stories of your Coleman-St.Clair lines. I know that many are very
skilled at doing the research into wills and census and church records back
for centuries or digging out the last little tidbit of relationship, but I
find that I tend to enjoy the stories even more -- of steeplejacks and devil-
may-care romeos and life on the farms and docks and in the mines. My father
used to have wonderful ones about canoeing in the far back country in
Minnesota and up into Canada and about going squirrel hunting along the
Canadian River in Oklahoma. I often feel that this is what it is really about
-- imagining the fabric of another time and place.
On the other side of my family, my maternal grandmother took off at age 18
from Elgin, Scotland in about 1922 for South Africa by herself. She lived the
rest of her life in Africa, married several times, worked as a journalist and
as an antiquarian, and even carved out a farm (again by herself) outside of
Bulawayo in southern Rhodesia. She died when I was very young, so it is the
stories that count -- the brief glimpses into another's life, another's
choices.
I even enjoy John Sinkler for that reason. Most immigrants during that period
had somehow chosen to come to America. But if he was a prisoner after the
battles with Cromwell, he didn't choose but will have been sent against his
will as a political prisoner. I wonder what he missed, who he left behind,
whether he was ultimately happy to have been sent, and how he got on with
those in the Massachusetts Bay Colony -- his politics and possibly his
religion must have been very different.
History as imagination.
Fiona
[
[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@zilker.net.
[ For subscription, unusubscription, or other instructions, see
[ http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html
[ or send mail to majordomo@zilker.net with this single line in the body:
[ info sinclair
[
[ To unsubscribe, send a message like this:
[
[ To: majordomo@zilker.net
[
[ unsubscribe sinclair
[