My Great-Great Grandmother, Rachel Medora Pryor Taylor

A few years ago, I was at a dinner party and the hostess asked the group (six of us, as I remember) if we knew the maiden names of both of our grandmothers.  She and I were the only ones who did.  When it came to our great-grandmothers, I was the only one who could ‘pass the test’ – not surprising given my Uncle Willard’s lifelong interest in our family genealogy and his delight in sharing his findings with all of us.

Now that Ancestry.com and other similar programs have become popular, I think a greater percentage of those dinner guests could probably name their most immediate forebears.  Not only that, but I imagine they might know something about those progenitors – where they lived and what they did for a living, and where they were born. If they were not born in the United States, perhaps their descendants might even know the circumstances under which they came to this country.

My Great- Great Grandmother, Sara Rand Richardson

What most of us probably wouldn’t be able to answer is whether or not our forebears entered the United States ‘legally.’   To answer that question, of course, it’s necessary to know what the immigration laws, if any, were at the time those brave souls left everything behind to begin a new life.  Or… were there any laws at all?  There weren’t always, you know.  The very first immigration law in our country was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.  Since that time, there have been many quotas and rules and regulations and hoops to jump through, all depending, of course, on the political climate of the time.

These are thoughts that course through my mind every single time I hear or read the smug comments such as the one in today’s Letters to the Editor in the Chinook Observer.  It begins Once again you feature a story about the detention of an illegal alien. Just the terminology telegraphs negativity, at least to me.  My mind immediately goes to little green extraterrestrials who are up to no good.   I much prefer “undocumented immigrant” or “unauthorized immigrant” but I’m certainly not so naïve as to think changing our vocabulary on this issue will resolve any problems.

My Great-Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Carson Espy

I don’t think it would be amiss if people knew a bit about their own grands and greats and great-greats.  More importantly, they should find out the circumstances under which their own families got here (all of us, except possibly our indigenous population, originally arrived from somewhere else) and what, exactly, the immigration laws were at the time.  That would be a start, perhaps, to figuring out why we got to where we are today and how we might solve some of the immigration difficulties we are facing.

So… let’s begin.  Do you know the maiden names of your eight great-great grandmothers?