POEM - This Ancestral Tangle

There are stories told

At family reunions

            Or on long vacation drives

About being related here and there

To this person or the other

I always wonder what is true

Am I really related to the Mayflower folks?

Are we really English and Russian and Swiss?

Or is it Swedish and Scottish and French?

What hat should I wear,

As I head out each day?

Turns out more than I thought

I know my pioneer heritage

Going way back on both sides

We have been Westerners now

For many generations

But drop back a few generations

            Things get a lot more wild

Before the west some went south

South Carolina to be precise

I have returned there for unknown reasons

Feeling a sense of home

Sure it was all just in my head

            Only to find out more correctly

It is in my blood

Those folks came from Scotland

Stopping briefly in Virginia

Before that England where I lose the trail

Of a name changed

Four different times since 1146

Steddanham, Le Stedeman, Stedman, Steedman

Until it settled on Steadman for now

But they stopped in Virginia long enough

To make an historical connection

As a wily trader married a Powhatan princess

A fascinating union

            From amidst of the earliest settlers

And they seem at first like only names

            Showing where they were born

                        Who they married

                                    Where they died

But it is enough to turn my heart

Make me look back

            To my fathers and mothers

Feeling there are stories yet untold

Desiring to help those stories be heard