Dads Throughout History Series – Part 1
Great-Great Grandfather: Dad’s Dad’s Dad’s Dad
Growing up in my extended family, there was a lot of emphasis on keeping our paternal last name alive. I was one of only three males with the name, and there had been three males in the generation before us, and three males in the generation before that who carried the name.
Our namesake had come from Europe, fought in the Civil War in what was the New Mexico territory, and married a Native American woman. We were descendants of Spaniards and Native Americans with a surname that needed honoring. That was, of course, what we were told.
Like almost everyone nowadays who is looking backward into their family trees, stunned to learn that they are not, after all, French royalty or part of a clan of fifth generation spirited Italians, I too have found the truth about my great-great grandfather. Indeed he fought in the Civil War, but not against the Confederacy. He was part of the 3rdColorado Cavalry, responsible for one of the most notorious Native American massacres in history.
Whether he was actively involved in the genocide, I’ll never know for sure, but what I do know, is that he lives on in me, if only one-sixteenth of him. I’m not proud of this heritage, but he is, in effect, a father of mine.
While this isn’t like the Disney movie, Coco, where I can go into the land of the dead and visit with great-great grandfather, I can only acknowledge who he might have been, and do my best to be who I am. Though he is part of me, he is not me. As a descendant, I am a distant child, but I am not his. As Khalil Gibran once wrote, our children only come though us, not from us. They are with us, but they do not belong to us.
This Father Time series will examine fathers through the past and present. Good and bad. I wanted to start with one of my own to come clean with some painful family history. While it’s not the mythologized version I grew up with, a more accurate history of who my great-great grandfather was will certainly guide me to be better than his supposed legacy. That’s often all men can strive for: be the hero of today, rather than a ghost of the past.
With the season of fathers upon us, it’s time to take a moment, and remember those men from who we came. How they shaped us, or not. How their legacies have lasted, or ended with us. How they live on, or not, within us, without us.
Photo Source:
Dunn, J. P., Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars, Volume 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886), p. 441.