Wednesday, May 4, 2016

In the past

I enjoy genealogy. I think I started back in 2004 with a visit to Ancestry dot com. Isn't that where everyone starts? Then it was an on again, off again, relationship with my dead ancestors. I may have mentioned this hobby of mine in an ancient post here. I don't think I'll go looking for it. Trust me. I did post something. I believe it was about 'Black Agnes', the Scottish noblewoman who defended the family castle successfully. She was an ancestor of mine; or so my amateur sleuthing tells me.

Last week I was looking up many of the 'Seymour' family trails (my paternal grandmother 'Nana' was a Seymour) and found that I had a very well known (at the time) ancestor that had started a war; all by himself. That was "King Phillip", a Sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, and the war was aptly named the King Phillip's War. My great uncle was Wamsutta, also known as Alexander Pokanoket, as he was called by New England colonists, was the eldest son of Massasoit Ousa Mequin of the Pokanoket Tribe and Wampanoag nation. King Phillip and the foolish colonists were responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 colonists and 6,000 Indians from various tribes. Their actions removed the Wampanoag people from memory until just a little over 100 years ago. 40% of the Wampanoags were killed and the remainder sold into slavery. But 'King Phillip' had a daughter, Ann Phillip, who was married to John Starkweather. They had a daughter, Mary Starkweather, who married John Stanton.  And they had a daughter, Lydia and on and on it went until I became the 9th great grandson of King Phillip.
If it hadn't been for the attitude of the colonists, (they didn't think they should pay for the land) the whole war could have been averted.

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