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864511320 Today in My History 2000:
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Perfect Day
Theater Reviews
My family Cast (updated 7/16)
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ITALIAN ??? 23 July 2020 I am 77 years old and for all of my life I have told people that I am Irish and Scottish, with a touch of German, on my father's side. Today I found out that I have Italian blood. I am shocked. My cousin Shirley's daughter posted some stuff that she found from Peach (another cousin) who had done a lot of genealogy work. When she died, I felt bad because she had devoted years to genealogy and had even traveled around the country looking for family information and had a whole closet full of binders of family history .... and nobody was interested. But one of Shirley's daughters took all of the information just to keep it and several years after Peach's death has been looking through it. Today she posted a brief summary of our history. I knew that she had traced our family, on my mother's mother's side, back to Robert the Bruce (left), one of the most famous Scottish warriors of the 12th century and 4th great grandson of Scotland's King David I. Our relative, Roger de Kirkpatrick, was an associate of Robert's and first cousin to William Wallace (Mel Gibson in Braveheart). His friendship with Robert resulted in the family motto ("I make sure"). They had been in a battle with John Comyn, of one of the prominent families in Scotland's Wars of Independence, who was killed in the church of the Greyfriars in Dumfries. Robert is said to have stabbed Comyn and later wondered if he had killed him. Our relative is said to have volunteered to return to the church to check. 'I mak sikker" ("I make sure") he is said to have said.
I've known that story for years. There is even a family castle in Scotland, Closeburn Castle, in the county of Dumfriesshire. My mother was there many years ago and was able to visit the castle (now run as a hotel), and get the tour from a distant relative. So all of that information in the papers that my cousin posted today was not a surprise, but this was Apparently the royal family of Este is linked with several other royal families, including the British royal family. Maybe Elizabeth and I are distant cousins. Think I can get an invitation to tea some time? So I have to re-think my family background. I'd always thought it would be fun to take one of those genealogy tests, but figured it would be boring because it would just be stuff that I always knew, but now apparently there is Italian, and possibly also French in my bloodline. Maybe the next time one of the tests comes on sale, I'll think about actually doing it and see what it says. In honor of my newly discovered Italian family history, I'm cooking ravioli for dinner tonight.
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This is entry #7425