Member-only story
During my growing up years, my family wove a tale of our Irish origins leaving me with the mixed up understanding that I was mostly Irish Catholic with a wee bit of German. Oh, so wrong. I learned that my family had participated in a unique 20th century “forgetting” of their ethnic origins and cultures to blend into this mid-century American white culture of conformity and privilege.
Whew, that’s a lot to unpack.
What I discovered in my adult years is that our family is almost completely the opposite — mostly German Catholics mixed with Protestant Irishfolx, mostly from Ulster and nearabouts. And a somber understanding that rewriting family history was a survival skill, especially in the 20th century two world wars with Germany. There was also the desire to distance themselves from the manifestations of those cultures in American lives often submerged in grinding poverty and despair.
There was an exception — my 2x great-grandmother, Jennie Tarleton Remley Murray (1869–1944) who reportedly emigrated by herself from Glasgow to land in Eastern Ohio, marry my 2x great-grandfather, and endure a pretty exhausting life. So we thought she was our representative Scottish ancestor. That would prove to be wrong.
Jennie is my most “recent” immigrant ancestor among the 16 2x great-grandparents. Everyone else was…
