Who you are.

So yesterday I found out that I am a Schwenkfelder. I dont know the exact details specifically, but enough to say with confidence I belong to this group of people with the goofy name. Years ago, when my Uncle Mark and I went on one of our walkabouts, we visited my Grandfather’s home town of Lancaster PA. We drove around, I saw some roads named Schultz, and some old graveyards with Schultz’s buried there, the headstones carved in german, the dates going back to the 1700’s. I didnt think much about it until Mark and I spoke again last night, and he casually mentioned genology work he had done years ago that explained that we were descendents of the Schwenkfelders. Its all over the web, the area my grandfather came from is right where these religious exiles landed and settled, leaving persecution in europe to practice their religion in America without losing their homes, being taxed, forced to convert or forced to be baptized in another religion. Pretty heavy stuff, and so weird to have the final say of just exactly who you are and where you came from so completely. The ships manifests, the passenger lists handwritten and beautiful are scanned and online now for anyone with a web browser to see. I know in the next few weeks I’ll get my uncle to help me with the details of the whole family tree, to see if we can find out just exactly who it was that my grandfather, my father, and I all came from.