Many people around the world will be focused on Liverpool, England this week as that city hosts the British Open golf championship. I am one of them. However, when I think of that region of England, I cannot help but move my eye a little south on the map to Cheshire County. It was in 1586 in Cheshire that Randel Holbrook was born. Randel was my 10th great grandfather. He married Francis Davenport and they had one child, a son they named Randel as well who was born in 1630. Randel II had one son named Ralph who was born in 1670. Ralph and his wife Mary Wilcoxon had six children. The third, a son named Randall immigrated to North Carolina in the American Colonies about 1700. The family continued to move about and create new generations, heading north to Virginia, then Kentucky and to present day Ohio.
Early England, Cheshire County center left.
But let’s go back to the Randels. A birth was a dangerous thing back in the 1500s and early 1600s. The fact that each generation had only one child and he survived is amazing. Even more so that each was a boy to carry on the family name. It shows just how precarious our family tree can be. Who knows but that Randel II or Ralph might have taken ill as an infant and barely survived? That would not have been unusual back then. Fast forward 400 years and the situation repeats itself. I am one of six children, two girls and four boys. Of those six, only one son was born to carry on the family name. We teased my nephew Ryan about the fact that the future of our family name relied on him having a son. Then, a year and a half ago, Noah Holbrook was born. All teasing aside, I wonder what Randel would think if he could see the results of his family 12 generations later? When we think about the lives people lived in the past, the struggles they endured, the courage they displayed to come to a new land, the wars they lived through and more, it makes me realize that it is our legacy to not just keep a name going, but to understand that keeping a family going is something we can be proud of.
Ryan and Noah Holbrook
Sadly, so few people today know or even care where there family came from. We see ancestors as some hazy, primitive people from the past not important in our high-tech, fast paced world today. Truth is, we owe much to our ancestors. Not just the famous people in history, but our ancient family who made it possible for us to be here in the first place. And that is why it is important to know where we come from. To read the names and think about the lives they lived in their times. To pass that knowledge on to the next generation. When young Noah is a bit older, I know his grandfather (my brother) and I will share with him the stories of his ancestors. We’ll talk about the things they must have seen and experienced. Like the revolution in America, the Civil War, the Great Depression and the World Wars. And, hopefully, he will be the better for knowing the history our family.
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