Interegnum

I now leave these Dixieland ancestors and their descendants for the most part proliferating in Ganderbill Holler.

The Ganderbill crew went on to farm smaller and smaller plots of land (due to inheritance), fight in the Civil War or hide from it, squabble among each other as the “Feudin’ Fugates,” and go on to make headlines such as “Fugate Kills Noble.”

Some of their immediate family set out for places known and unknown, perhaps as far away as Australia; some of the rest who stayed in “Bloody Breathitt County.” moonshined, mined coal, served in America’s wars, made babies, and kept the land in the family – a Prime Directive - with squabbles about boundaries continuing to this moment.

Genealogically speaking, life continued as it had from the time they got there – with cousins marrying distant or not so distant cousins – but nothing that suggests the incest that is believed in the popular culture.

I’d like to make two observations about the Dixieland familes as a transition to writing about my own ethnic, genetic, and historical heritage:

First, the metaphorical structure of the ancestors’ DNA seems to be that of a measuring flask connected to a funnel connected to a straw. While we do see repeated appearances of certain family names in the 17th and early 18th centuries indicating some continuing relationships, the general “intake” pattern can be seen a measuring flask which has collected input from the British Isles, France and Germany, and from the local Native Americans. This Eurpean input seems mostly to have taken place at three of the “cradles,” and then – with the exception of Pocahontas - the Native American input came into the family in Southwestern Virginia – most of it having come from the Cherokee in North Carolina.

Second, a relatively few of these families took the “straw” into the Kentucky mountains – and these were a mixed up lot – but not as much mixed up with each other as they would be among the hollers. The greatest influx into this area of Kentucky occurred between 1790 and 1830, after which the genetic bottleneck, so to speak, was metaphorically capped. Our family continued there for six generations – the recently recognized “minimum” for consideration as an “Old American.” (I proudly get to six on my side by stretching the facts)

Genetically, nothing changed in this immediate line until Bob Liftig met Inez Fugate in Philadelphia in 1969, and the genetic deck was shuggled again – probably more than it had been on either side for 2,000 years.

Genealogically, my heritage is as old as Inez’– and it had been more extensively documented until the unpleasantries I have been alluding to throughout this narrative began to occur. Here is my guess as to my early ancestry, according to rumor and innuendo:

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THE GENEALOGY FROM ADAM TO JESUS CHRIST

The Genealogy from Adam to Jesus Christ

(4) ASA

MENAN (37)

(5) JOSOPHAT