I began seeking my family history after my mother crossed over in 1999,  I suppose to reaffirm my connection with my family.  What started as a way of dealing with grief quickly became a spiritual journey...a quest to place my ancestors in the framework of history.

Fortunately other of my family members had begun the quest years earlier, which made my task much easier. When I started, I would never have thought that it was possible to trace back as far as many distant relations have. For example, on my mother's side the Allison family came to the New World in about 1624 from Lanarkshire, Scotland, to escape persecution by the Church of England, and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church. They built a new life as tobacco farmers and became involved more and more with this country as time passed. A group of the Allisons came to Texas in 1835, just in time to join the fight for independence from Mexico. Rewarded by payments of land in East Texas, they settled near Nacogdoches and began farming. 

On my father's side, some ancestors also came from  Scotland, fleeing political strife that continued to prompt men and women to leave the homeland and start over. Some stopped in Ireland for as much as a generation or two, mostly in the Ulster area, becoming known as Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish, still holding to their national identity. The Steedman or Stidman, family as it became known in America, came from the Lanarkshire area as well, The McDaniels also were from Scotland, though I have not yet discovered their origins, and Brian Horn was born in Antrim, Ireland, in Ulster, though his father had been born in America. Brian (also written as Bryan or Bryant) married a Cherokee woman as was common among Scots; Nancy Ward was known as The Beloved Woman of the Cherokees, a postion of high esteem in the Cherokee Nation. My family are descendants of Brian's children from his first marriage. 

The Society of Friends played a major role in the growth of the nation, and several branches of my tree were Quakers, though Jeremiah Horn was basically kicked out of the Society, ostensibly for living too deeply in Indian territory and marrying Cherokee women, but more likely from the number of Cherokee women with whom he had been involved and eventually married--four altogether--and so became a Methodist circuit preacher while he also ran a bar.  The Whites and Ellises also were Friends, with Rowland Ellis being a respected elder member in the early days of  Welsh settlement in  William Penn's colony. They had come from Merionmouthshire, Wales because of the oppression of the British crown. The Clouds likely were Friends, though I haven't been able to confirm that theory yet.  

My Griffin ancestors likely came from Wales, also, though I haven't made an accurate connection there yet. The Griffin brothers Richard and Spencer (my line) were born in Kentucky before settling in and marrying the Burch sisters in Indiana. After twenty-five years of rearing a family, the brothers brought a group to Texas in 1860 and they initially settled in Coryell county and later in Atascosa county near San Antonio to escape the Indian threat. After the War Between the States, in which the Griffin boys (as well as the Allisons) fought, the Comanches became the biggest threat to survival on the frontier.  One of Spencer's sons was shot with an arrow during an attack in the late 1880's.  An ironic note, in a letter to his son Anthony in about 1889, Spencer cites the U.S. government's employment of the Quakers in efforts to civilize the Indians. The Friends were paid approximately three million dollars to associate with the same native people for whom Jeremiah Horn was sanctioned for his involvement just decades earlier. 

These are but a few of the stories I encountered. I will add more as time permits, since I love to see the overall pattern of life. Not simply the names and birthplaces of my ancestors, but their motivation and their beliefs as well.