The All American family tree

During all the turmoil in our country now, I find myself thinking about our family tree. If you know me at all, you know that I have spent countless hours tracking our ancestors, compiling family data and being amazed at what a large collection of cousins that we have! We have I think, every nationality and race included in our family tree. We truly are an All American family! We are part of the great melting pot of people that is our America.

One little detail that I will mention in regards to our family tree database. There is no entry to designate what race/nationality someone might be. If there is one in the program, I have never bothered to look for it as I feel that is serves no purpose. I know we have represented in our tree, Native American, Chinese, Black, Syrian, Germans, Polish, French, Irish, Hispanic and many more , a true melting pot of colors and nationalities. They all make up our family tree.

I am going to spotlight one family on our tree today. This is the Decker family. They are the last of my direct ancestors to arrive in this country. They arrived in the U.S.A. on August 8, 1892. At that time, it was the parents and 3 children, 3 more children were born in the U.S.A. My grandmother was the 2nd oldest girl in the family and she married the son of French Canadian immigrants. Her oldest sister was married about 1903 to a fellow immigrant from Syria ,of all places. I always found this interesting. They came from such different worlds and surely did not speak the same native language, but somehow fell in love and married in this country. On researching the Syrians that came to this country in that time period, I was surprised to find that they were mostly of the Christian faith and came to this country for Religious reasons, in other words fleeing the Muslim persecution.

Today our country is boiling over with race riots, violence, murders, anarchy of all kinds. Do I have white guilt? No, i certainly do not, nor do I expect any one else to have any guilt about the color of their skin. We are almost all of us the children of immigrants in this country, built on freedom of religion and equality for all. Do we have some problems, well sure we do. We are all flawed human beings. None of us is perfect, myself included. We can do better but we could also do much worse. What is happening in our country right now can only make things worse. I will get off the soapbox now, back to regular programming. LOL

Patti and I made the move to the deep south just a little of a year ago. Did we put ourselves smack dab in the middle of a race riot? Well, I am very pleased and happy to report that NO we did not. There were a couple of peaceful protests in Tupelo. But, get this, the protesters marched along main street with the Mayor joining in, the peaceful protest ended with a “listening ” session at the Park. This involved many aldermen, police, elected officials listening and responding to the people’s concerns. what a concept. This was peaceful protest, the kind of protest that can effect change and improvement. Myself, having lived in the Twin Cities and St Louis, am very glad to have landed in Tupelo. God Bless the U.S.A.