When I was first researching the man who was my illegitimate father, for the longest time, all I ever knew at first about him was what I could find mentioned in history books and periodicals; his political career overshadowed sadly by how the press slammed him and how the government dubbed him intensely as notorious and how he has so often been extremely, and intricately maliciously documented
But I knew also of his work before he went into politics, his work as a leader in his community as a reverend and later, his well known speeches that laid the groundwork for labor laws and workers rights, what he did in congress; his speeches can still be found all over YouTube and the internet. Of course I knew that he was the forefather of the civil rights movement
But I never suspected the dark roots went beyond his notoriety never thought there could be much more worth looking into beyond the early struggles of his father’s early life as a young man struggling to find his own way. A way that…. lead back from the tobacco plantation of Virginia; a half breed whose mother was a Cherokee squaw concubine of a decorated confederate general whose father was a powerful plantation owner and slave owner. The general died on the battlefield and the pregnant squaw was tossed but was taken in by the man who became his step father and married the squaw and was by then a freed slave who brought him up as his own among the sons and daughters who later came to the freed slave and squaw
When the man I refer to here as Ethan Rhys-Jones had reached the height of his success in congress, those southern roots found him and, according to what he wrote in his auto biography, had been approached to visit the historical site that had been his family lineage by someone in the city’s political seat. They had wanted to celebrate an historical
date and have him publicly appear. He had replied simply “no thanks, I have no wish to ever step foot on that plaque of land.”
I’d always sensed there was some mystery within my blood. Some strange attraction to things I could have had no knowledge of but innately have always felt just as I had felt about Native American things.
So one day recently, around when I had Covid in 2020, I got curious and it was soon after my dna test results came that I decided to do some of my own detective work wondering what might be found in public records. I started with the gravesite which I’d found in an old photograph and it lead me on a shocking path first to the founding of the colonization of Virginia and all the way back over the ocean to King James and on and on the name traced further and deeper, connecting like dots of a tapestry puzzle and all connected to political powers and historical aristocracy going as far back to the Franks and the Normans of Brittany
My fascination with dna memory theory all come from things along this path that has lead me through my story ….I believe I am made of all things and contain all peoples
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