On This Day in Family History - March 17

 

For St. Patrick's Day I thought I'd post an explanation of the title of my book When We Were Irish. The following are excerpts from some emails I received from my mother (Wathada Burford Thomas) while she was working on tracing the Burford/Gibson/Gard family histories --

“I don't think I will ever dig up any Irish ancestors because I don't think we have any of those. (After my whole life-time of being Irish, I don't know if I can adjust to being English or not!) Our Irish friends told me last year that Burford is not an Irish name, and they thought it was an English name. So I thought that whoever our ancestors were, they probably went from England to Ireland sometime in years past and lived there (and probably married Irish people), until they came to this country on a boat. So a few weeks ago, when I decided to track them down back to whichever one came over here on that boat, the first thing I did was check name origins at some website on the Internet. (That website seems not to exist any more now!) Sure enough, Burford was definitely an English name. Gibson is a name that originated only in Scotland, and it even told which area of Scotland. So Grandma Burford's father's family did originally come from Scotland. But her mother's family (those Gards) came from England. I have them back to 1559 in Poundstock, England. Some of them came from Devonshire. So as far as I can tell, nobody in our ancestry originated in Ireland.”  

“I have never even considered trying to do a family history of the Gibsons or of Grandma's family, whoever they were. I would have just assumed that I wouldn't get anywhere with that. But I have always wondered about the Burfords, I guess because the Burfords told so many different stories about how and when they came to this country from Ireland. Well, as far as I can tell, nobody came from Ireland at all -- they all came from England except possibly the Gibsons -- Gibson is definitely a Scot name, so I suppose they came from Scotland originally. And Burford is an English name. And the Gards definitely came from England – Devonshire and some other place that I can't remember right now. Morris said Daddy has always told him that his grandfather came from England to Canada, then from Canada to this country... Wouldn't it be amazing if the story my daddy told about this was the only true story any of them ever told???” 

“I have decided to keep on being Irish.  For one thing, I never stopped feeling like I was Irish and I still believe I am Irish.  And I was looking through my family history a week or two ago, trying to find something and I ran across something that warmed my heart and made me feel warm and happy all over!  There was a couple of people in one of my histories who were born in Ireland.  So I might have at least a smidgeon of Irish in me.  I'm going to look that up again sometime, but it doesn't matter what I find out about it - I am going to keep on being Irish the rest of my life.  I feel like I'm Irish.  I even look like I'm Irish.  Of course, I guess I look like I'm English too, but I am IRISH  Inside and out and I intend to stay that way.  So that's settled.”

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Here's another kind of funny excerpt from Mom's emails...

"I think I told you about finding the Gards (my Grandma Burford's mother's family). I really fell into that -- those people must have kept good records. I thought there for a minute that I would get back to Noah any minute if it didn't stop." 

***Today I went to FamilySearch.com to see if I could find out more about the Gibson family tree, and -- lo, and behold -- the Gibson lineage traces all the way back to Adam!! (and even back to Adam's father: GOD!!!) I KID YOU NOT.***

Well, I don't think I'm gonna take all that at face value. But it was kind of a fun adventure, anyway.