Genealogy has never been my thing. I vaguely knew that my fathers side was Swedish, and that my mothers side had something to do with Arizona in the early days. That’s it. I didn’t grow up in an environment with lots of relatives swapping stories so I never had an opportunity, or desire, to pay attention to my lineage. I was a mutt from California with no strong ethnic or heritage history to be proud of.

And then of all things, a Hollywood type got me interested in my history. The actor James Woods is a big history buff and is constantly posting details of events and battles of the American Revolution on X/twitter. He posted something the other day about a group called the “Sons of the American Revolution”. Its members are people who can trace their lineage back to someone who fought in, or materially supported the Revolutionary War. It triggered a memory of my grandmother and some of the genealogy research she had done when I was a kid.

I knew she had spent years compiling family records, all via letter writing and phone calls. This was the 1970’s and there was no internet or Ancestry.com to reference. She had to get copies of letters and notes from family bibles to piece together the history. When she was done, she put together a book documenting the family tree and gave a copy to all the immediate family. I might not even have been a teenager when I got my copy. I probably glanced at it and put it in the closet.

Fortunately I managed to hold on to it all these years. James Woods’ X/twitter post prompted me to rummage through boxes to find that book. Wow. The level of detail my grandmother put together is impressive. I spent hours pouring through it, reading accounts of gun fights in the old west, relatives that moved west via ox cart, attending early universities, and business success. It really is a picture of America.

On my grandmothers maternal side, the family left England and sailed to Providence Rode Island in 1645. Two family members then served during the Revolutionary War with the Orange County Militia, Fourth Regiment from 1777 to 1779.

On her paternal side, that family left Scotland for America in about 1790. Her great grandfather was a colonel for the Union Calvary during the Civil war. He went on to start the First National Bank in Phoenix Arizona. His son was Mayor of Phoenix in 1909.

My paternal, Swedish, side of the family came to the US in the 1880’s. Interestingly, they changed their last name when they got here because the original Swedish name (Erikson) was too common. So all in all – we’ve been here for a while.

Now that I have all this data, I’m in the process of applying for membership to the Sons of the American Revolution. I don’t know what I’ll do with it when all done… but I do think it’s pretty cool to know that your ancestors had something to do with the founding of this country. It makes me question what I’ve done for my country? But that’s a topic for another day.

Oh, and the Earl comment in the title? My grandmother was able to trace lineage back to the year 1050. One of the branches shows that someone’s daughter married the Earl of Northumberland somewhere around 1100.

So basically I’m royalty. And I expect to be treated as such. I wonder if I’m allowed to carry a sword around now?