What we discovered only increased our national pride, not diminished it.
There must be a great deal of interest in genealogy for websites to be in 2nd place on the Internet.
So far I have not found any famous ancestors nor any horse thieves. There has to be a horse thief back there some where, I just haven't found him yet!
The oldest ancestor I have found so far is a dirt farmer born about 1720. He lived in north-central North Carolina in the 1760's. His only claim to fame is that he signed a petition protesting the corruption of English appointed county officials (times have not changed as much as we think in the last 250 years).
In 1766 or before a group of small farmers was taking shape in North Carolina (many of them were of Scot-Irish decent,,,,which my wife says that explains many of my character flaws). This group was called Regulators.
Riots by the Regulators occurred in 1768 and 1770 caused by corrupt taxes and property confiscation.
Things came to a head in early 1771 when the English governor's forces of 1,000 routed 2,000 Regulators at The Battle of Alamance (NC) on May 16, 1771. Casualties governor's forces 70, Regulators 210.
The Governor took about 10 prisoners and hanged one farmer on the spot to teach the Regulators a lesson. 6 of these prisoners were later hung on June 19, 1771, 4 days after their trials.
A footnote: After the English forces won The Battle of Alamance, the Governor then ordered his men to travel the country side and disarm all farmers (gun control 1771 style).
This was backwoods North Carolina not Boston, Philadelphia or New York so it is rarely found in history books.
Perhaps someday one of my great grand kids will want to find out more about his Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, GreatGrandad and his relatives.
Genealogy is both interesting and addictive, once I find an ancestor I want to find his/her parents, then their parents and then......
Contrary to what Mr McKinstry says, I have meet a minuscule number of snobs when digging into the past.
You are right. It is very addictive. That is how I got the 20,000 names in my data base. I would find one person on ancestry.com and I just wanted to find his/her parents. I traced the ancestry of someone who married into my maternal grandfather’s family back to King Clovis, the Riparian of Cologne in 410. Thought someone might like to have that info one of these days. It is not often that anyone can go that far back. One thing that has helped me a lot is just typing in the name + descendants and lots of sites would be linked.
My oldest ancestor born in the United States was also a farmer. He was born in 1653 in Rappahannock VA. He died before August 1716. His father came to the U.S. from the Isle of Wight, England, but I don't have the exact date.
Cornwallis brought cannon with him from New Bern.
Moral of the story: Never bring a knife to a gun fight.