An Ancestral Thought on March 17th

My father’s family, on his maternal side, settled the New England of 17th Century North America.  Both Mayflower Christian Separatists and Puritan Separatists, their descendant married the American born son, my grandfather-paternal, a man  of  Welsh-English Scottish-Irish (British Isles) ancestry whose parents arrived  in Maine.  They were Irish born, of Scottish and Irish birth.  He found work here, as did my g-grandmother who immigrated to join her family in Maine.

They found work and freedom.  None of my immigrant ancestors from Ireland of the British Isles, spoke any hostility against the Crown or hatred of the English in the 19th century.  No one of them promoted a “political boss “ nor joined organized political crime; nor suffered a non-secret ballot which would have forced them to choose between work or electing an honest man.

That paternal g-grandfather and his wife, had a large family, raised in Catholicism, and their daughter–in-law was the first of  her generation of her father’s family to be raised in Roman Catholicism for about 12 generations since the English reformation.

Those people came here from the Ireland of the British Isles for work and freedom – the greater opportunity of the America commenced by others here.  They found both, and their new and joined family prospered.

My mother, equally planted early in North America, as my father,  but in Canada’s Maritime Provinces in the 18th Century, mainly of Scottish-Canadian heritage, with a Scottish-Irish grandfather;  was joined  by her father’s family, a young German man and his wife , a young Norman-Irish ancestried woman who arrived in Boston about 1845, whose American borne daughter married a Canadian PEI borne “horseshoer”.

This blogger, has been part Irish – all of his life. Has never condemned nor hid it. And would never return nor diminish any other parts of  his non-Irish ancestry.

My family emigrated here from the British Isles and Germany and Canada.  Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day.

And  enjoy on March 17  as well, an anniversary of the Revolutionary War when in 1776, the British were forced to evacuate the port of Boston, by the command of General Washington.  My father’s ancestral relations from Puritan England, settled in the Boston area   150+ years were there too.  They, as the native Americans (and King Charles)  gave them,  gave the reciprocal good welcome and accomodation of new life, work and liberty here to later immigrants.