Ancestry Research...what a bummer

I have been checking my Ancestry again and have found some new holes to be filled in yet.  I got quite a few accomplished I think, and it is still astounding me that I cannot find my Cherokee link.  I have the stories of my Grandmother and Great Grandmother, which are fine, but the real link and connection does not show in either naming or in the roles.  None of the names come up in the search zones with Cherokee heritage or their research site.  Perhaps they were under an Indian name I am not familiar with or heard.  I was told our family’s tribe did not follow the association with the roles and that may be why they don’t surface.  But all I see back many generations into the 1600’s and up are very white names:  Tefteller,  Whitehead, Simerly, and such.  Definitely no Greywolf or Walkingstick which are common of the Cherokee heritage in East Tennessee.

I plan to focus my efforts on just filling out the tree and leaving the Cherokee past as it is, a few stories that maybe one day will amount to some truth.  Right now, they appear to be just stories and I am just a White-Anglo Saxon bred from British-German stock.  We wreaked a lot of havoc through the centuries and help establish many a historic feat and foothold for country and our ethnic heritage but no Cherokee evidence exists as of yet.

It’s a downer for sure given all the pride I have taken in it as well as believed the stories and of course, I am sure my mother, grandmother and on believed it because they must have been told the same.  When you’re poor in the south, it seems natural that many would want to separate themselves from the common poor folk and color it appropriately to avoid being looked down upon for just being poor.  Being part of an oppressed culture and ethnicity brings nostalgia and pride to a conversation otherwise viewed as humdrum.

Well on with it!