My Family Tree, According to Me

My Family Tree, According to Me
Ich liebe mein Familie! Every family has its origin, as I have mine. Family history does not reside in historical books, unless they are of a famous decent, so it is mainly based on communicative memory, stories, and every family members’ perception of how things have evolved. Family history involves a great deal of memory and stories, and mine has seemingly been quite an adventure.
My known family history is largely based off of my mom’s side of the family, for my dad was adopted and we do not know much about his real family. My dad’s family was allegedly linked back to Abraham Lincoln, but this is unproven for we have no old pictures or documents proving that was the case. My dad used to be told by his adoptive parents that this is all they knew of his biological family history. The earliest stories I have heard from my mom’s side of the family are from when my great grandparents met on a trip in Europe. My great grandmother was from Ireland and my great grandfather from Germany, and upon meeting they got married a short two months later and moved to America. There they began a simple life: my great grandfather manufactured cars and my great grandmother was a school teacher. They had two children, a boy and a girl. Their son, Robert, married a pretty young nurse, Helen, and they are now known to me as
grandma and grandpa. They had three children, Linda, Jenny, and Karen. Linda married a nice guy, named Charles, and they had two children, a boy and a girl. The boy’s name was Andy and the girl is writing this paper. We know this succession of lineage due to a thing called memory. I remember who my parents are, as well as my grandparents; they remember their parents and grandparents, and so on and so forth. My grandparents remember the story of my great grandparents meeting and have passed this story along over the decades.
As the first line in German reads, I do love my family. We have had a long journey to get us where we are now, and we have a long way to go to get us where we are going. Memory has been the key component in our families’ history, because without memory, none of our family would remember where they derived from, or who has succeeded them. Even memories such as Abe Lincoln being in my family, that cannot be proven, still have a significant impact on how my family views our history. If this story or others had not been passed down in the form of context memories, my family history would be non existent.

Julie Davis Section 012