Family History Mystery

Researching my family history has been time-consuming and impressive! Looking at my family coming to life in front of me as real people makes me feel honored to be a part of the family. Honestly, I started researching my family's history back in 2011. I mourned my great-grandmother's death for over a year and became depressed. I felt like I had lost my mother. I wanted to do something to start healing and allow the mourning to subside. I remembered my aunt's big white Bible had a handwritten family history. Then I remembered my great gran's oral story about her family. I realized that I could take what I was given and build a family tree with my family Bible. I began to research the Internet to see if I could find one of those Bibles to buy and came across a family history website.

I did not know the names of my 3rd great-grandparents. I asked family and friends of the family all the questions I could think of to get a glimpse of who my family was past my 2nd great grandparents. After getting the runaround from family members, I felt discouraged and gave up. In June of 2020,  I decided to research and find out how to do the necessary work to put my family tree together. One AncestryDNA and 23andMe kit later, I have found more than 800 relatives (so far). Right now, I am stuck with a mystery. This is a mystery I don't mind sharing.

My second great-grandmother is buried in a cemetery along with an enslaver and members of his family. I know that she and her inferred father, Hut Horton, is listed as mulatto on a census. When I researched the first Horton to be buried in the cemetery, it showed that he was possibly related to the man who founded Tybee Island. My curiosity peaked when I discovered that they originated from Ireland.

I have a certain percentage of Irish in my DNA. When I discovered that this family originates from Ireland, I wondered if that was my second great-grandmother's grandfather. Maybe that's the reason why she is buried there. I cross-referenced the surnames on the headstones to the surnames of my DNA matches and saw matches. This piqued my curiosity even more.

I understand that certain circumstances that occurred in the past were taboo, but I'm not looking for that. If I stumble upon it, that is just a part of history. What's done is done, and continue moving forward. But I want to know about the Caucasian side of my DNA. The Hortons had to have some type of traditions that made them unique. God knows that there are segments of my ancestors' stories that I will never uncover. But I don't want to continue to wonder about who they were when they are available resources to help piece together at least their names. And that's why I'm doing this.

History is just that, history. We can't undo what has already been done. We can only learn from it. I aim to do just that.