What's In Your Woo... uh, Family Tree?

My daughter wanted this information from me last time we got together, and I think I'm the last one who has it. Or some of it. What I got came in bits and pieces, some from a liar, some from drunks I was trying not to pay attention to at the time, and some from someone who later denied it all.

There used to be a really obnoxious saying about having a (N-word) in the woodpile. I don't know if it's still in use in places. It was from back when "everybody" still cared about being "pure" white, and referred to the idea that when the master was away, some black man snuck into the mistresses bed. Even to suggest that was literally a deadly insult. Or perhaps it meant that enough masters had forced themselves over the generations into their slaves' beds that the African blood became so diluted that the offspring could "pass" for white and had successfully slipped into white society, though perhaps with some question about skin tone or features that there might be some suspicion that the blood wasn't quite "pure". When society follows the "one drop rule", any such suspicion became important. And the expression expanded to include Asians, American Indians, anyone not of northern European descent.

Fast forward to the mid 1960s. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as the song went. The civil rights struggle was finally bearing major publicity, and some fruit. Liberalism was just becoming cool, and a little extra something in the ancestry mostly went from being a scandal to a delicious semi-scandal. It was becoming - in some circles - "Hey, guess what I've got in my family tree?" It was said conspiratorially, gleefully, fearlessly. Times really had changed, at least for many, especially if that little something extra was the family rumors passed along of some mysterious Native American blood.

This was how I heard it from Paul, during the courting period. There was no suggestion of which ancestor it might have been, or how many generations back, or which one of the many nations had contributed to the gene pool. It was further removed by suggesting it had happened back when the family had lived up in Canada before coming into the United States, possibly around the same time the family name had changed from Rouseau to Rosa.

Paul's brother John chimed into the discussion once, when we were all gathered at the family farm in Fairmont for some holiday of other, likely Xmas. He referred to the old family Bible, the traditional record of births, deaths, marriages. In it was a listing that so-and-so had taken himself a wife, along with a date. The theory he proposed was that no one deemed "heathen" could ever have their name placed in the family Bible back then, and this was the way to record the event, as well as a way to provide legitimacy to the offspring of that marriage.

There was no other record of who this woman might have been that the family knew about. Even the Bible is no longer available to the family for research. Many years back, a distant family relative asked to borrow it for some genealogy research. Permission was given, the Bible used and returned, and when the family next went to look at it - possibly years later - they found that a similar one had been substituted with no family history recorded inside. John has since denied ever knowing of her, believing in her, or telling the tale of the stolen Bible and what it contained though at the time he spoke as a witness to the entry.

Bob and Lylah, my parents-in-law, are no longer here for corroboration. During those long ago family discussions, I don't remember that they contributed much. Then again, after five boilermakers each, or some similar amount, I'd long since tried to quit listening. The stories just got repeated more often and louder, the drunker they got. Being the only sober person in the room has its social drawbacks. I probably missed a lot that could have been interesting. However, there is one thing that stands out: every time that particular story came around, they never denied any part of it except that there was proof. Which, of course, there wasn't. Not by then, anyway.

Once Lylah died, a number of years after Bob succumbed to the effects of the treatments for mouth cancer, John inherited the farm house. His plan was to offer the contents at auction, then have the house demolished, building a new one on the site to live in with his wife Pam. Nobody knew then how little time she had left. Before the auction, they offered to my family the chance to go through their library and take away whatever we wanted to of their books. Were they sure? Really, really sure? Any? We gratefully hauled off a carful. In the process we noted a very old picture, in a modern frame with matting, on the wall over one of the bookcases where it had been ignored for years. In it was a couple, in very outdated dress and stiffly posed, and on the paper backing were a whole series of names. It started with Matthew Rosa, and from the number following there were either the couple's many children - whose names have coincidentally been passed down through the family - or the actual names of the descendants over the generations in order, oldest to most recent. There was nobody left to ask. However, as I recall the last three names were Harry, George (in some order), and Robert. Those were the recent generations.

But one thing stood out plainly to us: the woman in the picture was very obviously an elderly Native American (or Canadian?), dark, wizzened face poking out above the European-style dress. I like to think it was his defiant way of proclaiming to the world that wouldn't accept his wife according to its conventions that here, indeed, was his life-mate, and the rest of you be damned!