DOTR Lesson 2: Honoring the Ancestors

Ancestors of My Blood

• Charlie and Diane, my parents
• my grandmothers and grandfathers, I cannot remember their names or ever meeting them except for Nana Jule, my father's mother; only my mother's mother is still alive
• my father's family comes originally from Ireland and crossed the ocean fleeing the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s; they settled in central Pennsylvania, in coal country, and worked the mines there, some of them intermarrying with Welsh descendants already living in the area
• I do not know anything about my mother's family, except that she has German, Welsh, English and a bit of French blood flowing in her veins; disowned by her family shortly after I was born, we have hardly any contact with her siblings and no contact with her parents

Ancestors of the Land of My Birth
(Lancaster, Lancaster County, PA)

• Susquehannocks ("people of the muddy river"), an Iroquoian-speaking tribe also known as the Conestoga, lived along the Susquehanna River in what eventually became New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland (and possibly West Virginia); Europeans rarely came so far inland, and so they likely lived undisturbed in this area for several hundred years. Captain John Smith of Jamestown met them in 1608, when they had a sizable village near what is today Lancaster City, where I was born. Their numbers declined steadily over the next century due to disease, relocation and war. Eventually the remainder of the tribe settled in a small village called "Conestoga Town" in Lancaster County, where in 1763 the last remaining Susquehannocks were murdered by the Paxton Boys.
• Other native tribes of the area include the Shawnee, Gawanese, Lenpae and Naticokes.
• John Kennerly received the first deed to the area of Lancaster County from William Penn in 1691, but no evidence of European settlers exists in the area prior to 1710. Lancaster was named after the city of Lancaster in Lancashire, England, native home of on of the earliest settlers, John Wright.
• Surnames of some of the earliest settlers include: Caernarvon and Lampeter (Welsh); Cocalico, Conestoga and Peshtank/Paxton (Native American); Warwck, Lancaster, Martic, Sadsbury, Salisbury and Hempfield (English); Donegal, Drumore, Derry and Leacock (Irish); Manheim (German); Lebanon (Biblical); and Earl (anglicized German)
• Many Anabaptist Mennonite immigrants (ancestors of the Amish) arrived in Lancaster County during the 1720s and 1730s, accepting William Penn's offer of religious freedom and tolerance (as part of a "holy experiment"). Quakers were also early settlers of the area.
• Members of the pacifistic Moravian Church began building the town of Lititz as a planned community in 1740s.
• James Buchanan, native of Lancaster, was elected the 15th President of the United States in 1856 (and his bad policies helped bring about the Civil War).
• Immediately north of the Mason-Dixon line, Lancaster was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, as ordinary citizens helped escaping slaves make their way north to (relative) freedom and safety. Involved in one well-known incident of violence were William Parker, Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Ford, Joshua Hammond and Castner Hanway.

Ancestors of the Land Where I Dwell
(Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, PA)

• The county, first in Pennsylvania to be given a Native American Indian name, takes its name from the Allegheny River, the word having Lenape origin and possibly meaning "fine river."
• A place where three rivers meet, it was claimed and settled by various native tribes prior to European settlement, resulting in a multi-ethnic mixture that included Iroquois, Lenape, Shawnee and Mingo.
• The first Europeans to claim the area were the French, specifically Captain Pierre Joseph de Celeron who claimed the Ohio Valley and western Pennsylvania for Louis XV. Robert de la Salle, a French explorer and trader, was the first to "discover" in the area (in 1669).
• In an attempt to claim the area for the British, Virginians were sent in 1754 to build Fort Prince George at the conjunction of the Allegheny, Ohio and Monongahela Rivers; however, they were discovered by the French, who captured the fort and renamed it Fort Duquesne. This fort became a focal point for conflict between the British and French during the French and Indian War in the mid-1700s. Eventually, in 1758, the British recaptured the fort, destroyed it, rebuilt it and named it Fort Pitt.
• During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes besieged Fort Pitt for two months, eventually defeated by Colonel Henry Bouquet. Evidence suggests this defeat was due at least in part to one of the earliest known records of biological warfare: Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered the distribution of smallpox-inoculated blankets to the Native Americans surrounding the fort.
• In the 1790s, workers and small farm owners rebelled against unfair tax on whiskey imposed by the federal government, in what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion (1794). President Washington responded by sending troops to quell the rebellion, setting a precedent that local citizen-based resistance to the new government would not be tolerated.
• In the 1830s, Welsh people migrated from the coal mines and steelworks of Merthyr (in South Wales) in the aftermath of the Merthyr Rising of 1831.
• The American Civil War boosted the economy of Pittsburgh, and a decade later in 1875 Andrew Carnegie founded the Edgar Thomson Steel Works (eventually becoming the Carnegie Steel Company), beginning an almost century-long dominance of the steel industry in the city (creating truly hellish pollution as a result).
• Following WWII, the city began to focus on civic revitalization, but in the 1970s and 1980s the steel industry collapsed, leaving unemployment high and the city population dwindling. Since then, economic focus has shifted to the service sector, with emphasis on education and medicine, as well as robotics and high technology.

Ancestors of the Spirit

• The ancient proto-Celts and Celts, with their priests known as the Druids (c. 800s BCE - c. 400s CE), who left evidence through archeological records, cultural heritage and evolving oral and literary traditions.
• Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama, c. 563 - 483 BCE), Indian spiritual teacher and "the awakened one," founder of Buddhism, and the teachings of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and anatman (no-self).
• Lao Tzu (c. 500s BCE) and Chuang Tzu (c. 300s BCE), ancient Chinese philosophers and spiritual leaders deeply influential in the founding and development of Taoism.
• Jesus of Nazareth (c. 5 BCE - c. 30 CE), Jewish spiritual leader and healer and (inadvertent?) founder of Christianity, and the teachings of the Law of Love and the Sermon on the Mount, among others.
• The monks, nuns and priests of Celtic Christianity, especially in Ireland (c. 400s - c. 700s CE), who resisted the Romanized, more imperial and urban forms of Christianity and cultivated instead a Christian tradition which embraced the sacredness of the natural world, poetry and music.
• St. Brigid of Kildare (c. 451 - 525), one of the three patron saints of Ireland, reputedly a Christian nun, abbess and bishop (though she may not be a historical figure at all, or a blending of an authentic historical figure with the myths and legends of the Pagan goddess, Brighid).
• Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, 1207 - 1273), thirteenth century Persian poet, theologian and Sufi mystic (his poetry in English translation by Coleman Barks).
• St. Teresa of Ávila (1515 - 1582), Spanish mystic, Catholic saint, Carmelite nun and theologian of contemplative prayer, and St. John of the Cross (1542 - 1591), Spanish mystic, Catholic saint and Carmelite friar.
• Iolo Morganwg (aka Edward Williams, 1747 - 1826), indirectly, through the influence of his forgeries in Welsh literature and poetry.
• John Keats (1795 - 1821), English Romantic poet.
• Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), French writer, human rights activist and Romantic, as well as his fictional characters, Jean Valjean and Marius Pontmercy from the novel Les Misérables.
• William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), Irish writer, poet and collector of Irish poetry, legends and folklore.
• Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), Bohemian-Austrian poet, and his poetry (in English translation by Stephen Mitchell) as well as his Letters to a Young Poet.
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 - 1948), Indian political activist, pacifist and writer, and his teachings of satyagraha (or "love force"), the resistance to tyranny and oppression through civil disobedience and nonviolence founded in love, truth and respect and honor for life.
• Dion Fortune (aka Violet Mary Firth Evans, 1890 - 1946), British theosophist, occultist and author.
• J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973), English writer and philologist, author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and C.S. Lewis (1898 - 1963), English writer, theologian and Christian apologist, author of the Chronicles of Narnia.
• E.E. Cummings (1894 - 1962), American poet and essayist.
• Evangeline Walton (1907 - 1996), American author of fantasy fiction, and her retellings of the Four Branches of the Mabinogion.
• Madeleine L'Engle (1918 - 2007), American writer of young adult fiction, and her Wrinkle in Time series.
• Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930 - 1999), American author of the fantasy Mists of Avalon series.

I'm sure there are more, but this is just the list I could compile for now...