Time for a little Brecht

More rain. I have been spending hours researching family history on my Mother's side. My father's side has already been covered back to 1066 on Granpa's side (in fact, Granpa wrote a big book on it) and Gigsy's (paternal grandmother) back to the 1600's. You think that would be good enough for me, but that big blank hole on my mother's side was getting to me.

Some things about family history are fun. I already knew that a g-g-g + granpa had been an instigator in the Gunpowder Plot. Then I found out that a more recent one had married an offspring of a man who refused to sign the Constitution, wrote the Virginia Bill of Rights, and wasn't happy until the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. So, he's a great great something grandpa too.

Back to Mom's side. On her father's side I actually managed to go back six or seven great grandfathers to where he came over from Germany. Then his son's wife was scalped by Indians. She managed to chuck at least one child into the thicket to hide them (she had six at the time). She was then taken, along with one of her sons, and another woman. Unfortunately gggggrandma was pregnant and unable to keep up, and was tomahawked and scalped en route. The other woman managed to escape to sound an alarm, and a party went after the Indians. The Indians, led by Chief Killbuck, a Delaware, had split into two groups, and there was a great fight with one of them.

Gggggg uncle, then aged 11, made his way into Ohio with some of the tribe and lived with the Indians for 10 years and ten months. During that time, he had children with Killbuck's daughter, Naddie Nyeswanan. He later returned after being collected by my gggggggrandfather, his brother. I have no idea at present what became of Naddie, but there are Killbuck descendents with gggggguncle to this day.


Somewhere in that time period one of those great grandpas instigated an uprising against the colonists in favor of King George. Mostly it was in protest of the huge taxes being levied to pay for the colonist's army. It included raising a British flag in defiance, which helps me to understand why my mother used to love to shout, "Raise the flag!"

Now I understand why I get so riled up about politics-apparently it's in the blood on both sides!

Well, I was stumped trying to chase back my maternal grandmother's line, so I tried to persue maternal great X 7 grandpa back into Germany. The name spelling reverted, and I spent several hours learning all about Europe's warring history in the early 1700's. I actually found a matching name going back to the 1500's in the Netherlands if I added a "van".

Not many of those leads were in a language I could read, but I stumbled upon a later Brecht still in Germany. Actually my original American ancestor was so mad about the taxes he went back to Germany, along with one of his sons, so I suppose this one could be a distant cousin.

Here is a poem by Bertolt Brecht
[Original]

Ich will mit dem gehen, den ich liebe.
Ich will nicht ausrechnen, was es kostet.
Ich will nicht nachdenken, ob es gut ist.
Ich will nicht wissen, ob er mich liebt.
Ich will mit ihm gehen, den ich liebe.