back to the family

Continuing from yesterday... Most of my father's family has been in the New World a looooooooooooong time. I'm talking mid- to late-1600s, here. That was before they even invented the word "revolution."

Let us now go back to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Panwell Van Der Poest, born in 1550 in Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands. Yessir. According to Ancestry.com, I'm Dutch. And Pop always thought he was all German! He is on his mother's side, perhaps (the High side...his mother's maiden name was Margaret Louise High). But not the Post line! We're from the Netherlands, it seems. At some point, Panwell emigrated from Gelderland to England and married an Englishwoman, Susannah Van Gelder (from the sound of her name, she might've been descended from Dutch immigrants too). They had a son, Arthur, in 1580. It was either Arthur or his father Panwell who changed their surname to Post, more likely to fit in better in English culture. This means, then, that I could be a wee bit English now as well as Dutch, German and Norwegian. I didn't see that coming (if it's true).

Arthur's son Richard Post (b. 1617) did something very naughty. I found a story, a written account on Ancestry, which stated that Richard committed some heinous religious act that made his father disinherit him. Given the time frame we're looking at here, I'd say Richard probably converted to Protestantism. Possibly he did it for love. I can just see it now: Richard's wandering down the streets of Kent with the foolish dreams of a young man in his head, when suddenly he sees a beautiful woman. She's calm, demure, strong, and absolutely gorgeous. She seems to float over the ground rather than walk. Her eyes could charm the beasts and her voice could soothe the swelling seas. She's everything he's ever wanted and more. He's smitten, consumed. He must have her. But she's a Protestant. No problem-o, says Richard to himself. I'll just convert to Protestantism. YOU'LL DO WHAT?! Arthur hollers, grabbing Richard by the ear and shaking him.

For whatever reason, Richard and his new wife Dorothy (née Johnson) packed up and headed for the New World soon after Richard was disinherited. After arriving in New York, they welcomed little John into their life in 1646. John sired another son named Richard, in 1684. Richard then begot Joseph Post in 1720. Joseph was the first Post who had the stones to leave New York. He didn't go far, though. He went to Pennsylvania, married Mary Smith, and had a mess of kids. One of these was named Jeremiah, born in 1769. Yep, one of my ancestors was named "Jeremiah Post." (Don't worry, the Post family name game gets even better.) As if that wasn't good enough, he lived at about the same time that Jedediah Smith was exploring the West. I wonder if Jeremiah's mother and Jedediah were related...? Anyhow, Jeremiah married a woman named Martha Craycraft (born 1776, incidentally) and sired Charles G. Post on her in 1800. Charles G. married Elizabeth Bryant (who was the daughter of David Bryant, a private in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War). And in 1832, Charles and Elizabeth had a son named— [SIDENOTE: Don't get the impression that my ancestors were only children. Most of the Post men were randy buggers, and had oodles of kids, just like Joseph did. Jeremiah, Richard, John, all of 'em had at least 7 kids or something. Joseph, however, appears to be "the Post with the most," if you take my meaning.] —Leonidas Hamline Post. You can't beat that name with a stick.
In 1875, Leonidas Hamline fathered a little junior Leonidas (with a mysterious woman named "Althea" whom I haven't been able to find any information on at all). It was Leo Junior who fathered my grandfather, Edward Post, in 1917. Edward went on to marry Margaret Louise High and have my dad, Timothy Post, born 1953. Tim met Beth Ann Fritz in Nevada, married her, and welcomed yours truly into the family in 1986. All other things being equal, my kids should start popping into existence in the 2020s. That's nearly 500 years of Posts. We went from the Netherlands to central England, to New England, to Ohio (Charles G. moved from Pennsylvania to Spencerville, Ohio), to Florida (where Grandpa Ed relocated) to Nevada (Dad loves it there) and then California (I was born in Auburn, up in Placer County).

Some of the information I've uncovered is almost too fantastic to be true: another Dutch ancestor on Dad's side was born in China. I surmised he might've been the son of a crewman on a trading vessel. The link between us is unreliably rickety, though. I do know that I have at least two relatives, one on each side of the family, who fought in World War I. Add in David Bryant and my grandfather, Harlan Fritz (who fought in the Korean War), and my family tree is starting to look rather illustrious, isn't it? (And I haven't even factored in the accomplishments of my female relations yet; who knows but that some were suffragettes, or revolutionaries, or entrepreneurs, or scientists? I have yet to find out.)

As I said before, I don't know how much of this is true and how much isn't. I'm relying on work that others have done, based on sketchy sources and vague census records. (By "vague census records" I mean "census records with names that are often flagrantly misspelled, and were probably collected by buck-toothed yokels.") But it's fun to believe that it might be true. It's the ultimate kick in the pants to muse on the nature of my family tree. The thought of who and what I might have sprung from dazzles me. I wonder what Panwell Van Der Poest looked like. Which ale he preferred. Where he liked to hang out after he got off work. What kind of father and husband he was. What made him decide to move across the English Channel. I wonder what kind of voyage Richard and Dorothy had going over the Atlantic in the mid 1600s, and what went through their heads when they saw the New World on the horizon. I wonder who that mysterious woman Althea was, what her family was like, and what possessed her to marry a man named "Leonidas." I wonder if Joseph Post whistled while he built his family a house in Pennsylvania a hundred years later, and if he did, what tune it was. I wonder if Martha Craycraft was proud that she was born the same year the Declaration of Independence was signed. I wonder if Jeremiah Post liked to proselytize, if Charles G. ever went exploring, how many other kids young Leonidas beat up for making fun of his name. It boggles the imagination, to say the least.

My work has only just begun. I've added so many relatives in such a mad frenzy that I shall have to go back and comb through them once again. I need to weed out the discrepancies (who were born, say, after their fathers and mothers died). That's only half the task, though. I should like to begin going back the other way and fleshing out the branches of my family. I want to expand my family tree sideways and forward now instead of back, and find out if I have any illustrious relatives in American (or even European) history. You want to know the real reason I began doing this? You'll laugh when you do. I want to find out if I'm related to Wiley Post. You know, the famous pilot. First man to fly solo around the world. Set a bunch of altitude and long-distance records. Died in 1935 with humorist Will Rogers when their plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. I just want to know, one way or the other. That's all. But the stuff I've found out since then is pretty neat, too.

Your turn, Ian.

immigrant song

Just so you know, I'm unsure how much of the following is true. Once I got back beyond the 1800s, I was cross-referencing other people's research instead of using our own recorded family history. But if what I found is true, then...

Well, let me tell you about it first.

This turned out to be a lot longer tale than I thought, so I've split it into two parts. This is the first, and will concern my mother's side of the family. I'll do Pop's side tomorrow.

It never seemed wise to shell out good money to Genealogy.com or Ancestry.com merely to determine the nature of my family tree. But I desperately wanted to know. Was it a poor, malnourished wisp? Or was it an oak, a mighty, spreading growth with roots which plunged deep into Old World soil and sprouts which soared across the waters? How illustrious were the branches? Were there any famous leaves, celebrated buds? To which twigs may I claim relation? Which blossoms have awed the world, if any? What blooms have made their mark on humanity, broken molds, shattered records, defeated obscurity, ground mediocrity into the dust of ages? Who, exactly, am I? And who am I related to?

I had almost no idea. Dad was under the impression that he was 100% German, and that his ancestors (formerly called the "Von Posts") came over on the boat in the 1840s. Whispered rumor suggests I'm distantly related to the folks at Post cereals, but not closely enough to warrant an inheritance. (Bummer.)

I knew even less about my mom's family. The word on the street was that one branch emigrated from Prussia, also in the 1800s. The rest of the family was already in the States by then. That's as far back as our written genealogy goes, so it was impossible for me to know exactly where the rest of my family came from. Or it was until Ancestry.com came along.

One rainy afternoon a few weeks ago, Mom and I finally broke down, bought an account, and started poking around. The rest of what follows was gleaned using Ancestry's records. Though I made use of official records as much as possible, I had to rely on other people's family trees for the most part. I have no idea how accurate this information is, if at all. But some of the things I found were rather amazing, regardless.

My mom's family hasn't been in the country too long. Her mother's maiden name was Leitzen, and by all accounts, the Leitzens were big-boned, no-nonsense Illinois farmer folk. I don't know much about the family line beyond that. Mom's mom's mother's maiden name was Rhodes; I'm actually named after my great-great-grandmother's father, Andrew Rhodes. After him and the Leitzens, Ancestry just petered out on me. No hints, no records, nothing. Same thing with my grandpa's father's line, the Fritzes. That's about as German a surname as you can get. I can only assume that they were all emigres, early 20th or late 19th centuries, as assumed.

On mom's dad's mother's side, however, I got a little farther. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand introducing, Anders Hansen! Born in Gjerpen, Norway, June 24, eighteen-hundred and thirty-three! (P.S. WOW.) I don't know what the situation was like in Norway in 1833, nor what warranted his emigration. Maybe Anders was sick of freezing his butt off every winter. Whatever the case, he took his wife Mariah and split for the States. Upon arrival, Anders and Mariah changed their names. I'm not sure why they did this. "Hansen" seems perfectly easy to pronounce. But they changed their names anyway. They became the Sandleys. Anders also changed his name to given name to Andrew. Maybe he did it to fit in; maybe it was "fixed" by whatever passed for Ellis Island back then.

Either way, Andrew and Mariah Sandley entered the country sometime in the 1850s or 60s. Anders Hansen became the other grandfather I'm named for, Andrew Sandley. He and Mariah settled in Wisconsin and gave birth to a son, Ole Sandley, in 1870. Ole and his wife Amy (originally Amy Van Voorhis) gave birth to my great-grandmother, Ruth Sandley, in 1908. NINETEEN-OH-EIGHT. (P.S. DOUBLE-WOW.)
I actually knew her, too. She lived to the ripe old age of 99. She got that gene from her father; Ole died in 1964, at the age of 94. I can remember going to visit Ruth in Freeport, Illinois, many a time. First at her home; then at a nursing home; then at one of those rather sad places where the extremely elderly wait around to die, peeing their pants and losing their memories. She barely recognized us by the end. The last time I saw her was when I and all of my Fritz-side cousins had a big reunion at Grandpa Fritz's place. She was frail, wispy, thin as a stick, her voice faint and scratchy as an old phonograph record. Her hands were gnarled and wrinkled. But that didn't matter. I was always struck by some ineffable awe in her presence. It was the same of awe I felt in museums when I looked at well-preserved artifacts. This woman had lived almost an entire century. She had been born in 1908, the same year as Rex Harrison, Louis L'Amour, David Lean, Edward R. Murrow, Tex Avery, Ian Fleming, Mel Blanc, Milton Berle, and William Saroyan. The same year a massive asteroid exploded over Siberia. The same year Robert Peary set sail for the North Pole. The same year Henry Ford manufactured his first Model T. The same year Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were supposedly killed in Bolivia. My great-grandma Ruth was four years old when the Titanic sank. Six when World War I broke out. Twenty-one when the stock market crashed. Thirty-three when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Thirty-nine when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Sixty-one when man walked on the moon. Sixty-two when the Beatles broke up. Eighty-one when the Berlin Wall fell. Ninety-three when the Twin Towers were destroyed. This woman witnessed history. What impressed me the most about her, though, was how lucid she remained, until the very end. Her body was withering, but her mind was hale and healthy. Her voice quavered, but she spoke with conviction, intelligence, and wisdom always. I miss her a lot for only having seen her three times. And oh, the stories she told... I'll bet old Ole could have told a story or two himself.

That's your cue, Robert.

danged if you do

I can't take criticism at all, really. I'm an inveterate weasel. Should anyone say anything remotely critical or even neutrally corrective (i.e., "There's a better way to do that"), my self-esteem and dignity throw themselves out of the window. Depending on my opinion of the other person, I'll either (a) equivocate by saying "I'm rusty" or "I'm trying my best," or (b) deny everything to save face. Rarely, very rarely will I ever respond to criticism by saying, "Is that so? Thank you for telling me. I'll try to do better next time." A deplorable situation. But that is not the point. Being unable to take criticism is one thing. But, it seems, I can't take praise either. I have an extremely odd way of dealing with praise. When I'm in company, I'll look down at the ground, go red, mumble an refutation, and scuff the dirt with my toe.When I receive a compliment electronically, however, I turn into something like a zealously rehearsing actor with Tourette's. I jump up and wander about the house, giggling eerily and repeating odd snatches of movie lines and book excerpts. I'm not sure why this happens. Perhaps this is my inherently modest psyche's way of deflecting praise: leaving the room and pretending to be somebody else. Or maybe my joy at being recognized for something overwhelms my puny brain and sends me into a hurtless form of schizophrenia. I've heard that, across cultures, there are a variety of ways in which praise is received. According to the brief-but-informative international etiquette guide Behave Yourself!, it is unnecessary to deny a compliment or be self-effacing in the United States, as it is in some other places. If someone compliments you, accept it and say "thank you." Whereas in Asian cultures, it's not only common, but actually considered the norm to deny any compliment you're given with a self-deprecating statement. In China, people will never come out and say "no." Saving face is so important to them that they will use very gentle negatives like "I'll consider it" to preserve the other's dignity. In Japan, when giving a gift, one commonly says tsumaranai mon ("It's nothing special"). In Singapore, if you even express disagreement with someone you don't know very well (thus causing them to lose face), you can be viewed as pushy or hostile. Diplomacy, correctness, and indirect dissension are the keys to politeness. I routinely do all three of these things. I hate to just flat-out say "no way" to people. So instead I'll say mealy-mouthed things like "I'll think about it," or "You have a point," or "Perhaps next time." Whenever I give somebody something, and they're gushing over it, I invariably say "Oh, it's not much," or "It's the least I could do." I tend not to disagree with people at all the first time I meet them (particularly beautiful women). I'm afraid I'll impress them as being argumentative or disagreeable. It's only after I get to know them that I begin to dissent with whatever wrong-headed, idiotic opinions they may have. So what does this mean? Well, it confirms something I've suspected for a long time. I'm a closet Asian. I'm turning Japanese. I was this way even before I went to Korea, so it must be something hidden deep within my genetic makeup. Perhaps my great-great-grandfather wasn't from Prussia like Ancestry.com says. Maybe he was a Sino-Korean transplant from Manchuria and immigrated to Prussia before marrying my great-great-grandmother (who had an Asian fetish before it was cool) and subsequently immigrating to the States from there. I'm sure any genealogist or psychiatrist could give me a categorical answer on this one. But he or she had better be careful in phrasing their diagnosis, or I might get up and start stalking around the office, grinning and muttering movie quotes to no one.