Diamonds are forever

I never knew a lot about my family.  But I learned one thing today.  I knew that I was named after my father's father, Herbert Allen Childress.  But I discovered this afternoon that if I'd been named after my mother's father, I'd be... Mortimer.  (Thanks, Dad, for insisting that your side of the family be represented.  I didn't like the name Herb when I was a kid, but if I'd known the alternative, I'd have been a lot more appreciative!)

There's a much longer story to be written, and it will be soon enough.  But I've learned more about my mother's family today than I'd known in the prior fifty years.  And some things I thought I knew, I now know are entirely wrong.  All because of a little stone.

Turns out that I MAY have had a distant relative who was one of the "witches" executed in Salem — Sarah Averill Wildes.  Turns out that my mother's original American ancestor, Thomas Averell, arrived in Massachusetts about ten years after the Plymouth settlers.

I feel an odd weight... nine or ten generations of Averills looking over my shoulder.  There've been several hundred weddings on that side of the family before this one.  We only think we're on our own.

I haven't gone as far back on my dad's side yet, but here's a telling moment from the 1920 census, in Yell, Arkansas.  Look at the size of this household

• My great grandfather William A. Childress, age 46, and his wife Alice (sometimes spelled Alose), age 41.
• Their eldest child Herbert A. Childress, age 21 (my grandfather), his wife Maude, age 21 (my grandmother), and their first son John Hulbert, age 1 (my uncle — my dad would be born later in 1920).
• William and Alice's other children Guy (19), Edwin (17), Mattie (16), Gilford (14), William Henry (12), Johnnie (10), Robert (8), Merle (4) and Bill (1).
• William's mother Hattie Childress, age 78.

I can see already that the patterns of the Dust Bowl Childresses and the High English Averills emerged long before the 20th century...