Family Ties

Heres some background knowledge needed to make sense of some of the things I ramble about today: I've been on a bit of a genealogy kick since spring break. My cousin Lindsay is a senior at JMU and has to compile a complete (as possible) family tree for one of her classes- something like historical ancestry if I remember correctly. Over spring break, she came to visit and discuss our ancestry with my mom and memaw (grandma... or whatever other name your used to). During the course of the day I found out my mom's side of the family is Irish, German, and Italian; and the Shiffletts are some crazy sons-of-bitches up in the Appalachians. I don't know much about my dad's side of the family, other than we have one very common last name, and my grandma Brown says we are Scandinavian.

Now, for some seemingly irrelevant background information. It will eventually make sense I promise... Virgina Tech has a sport horse breeding program and it is currently foaling season. The first three babies have arrived (all bay colts) and only one has been named. The are some rules to naming these horses. The foal's name begins with the same letter as it's sire (father) and the foal's name is followed with VT if it was bred and born here. One of the foals was born on March 17- St. Patrick's Day.

Okay, so now that you have a bit of an idea of where the hell I'm coming from, lets see if you can make sense of this.

I was thinking of good names for the colt born on St. Patrick's (even though I have no say in naming him) and trying to come up with something fittingly Irish, but not cheesy. Now, his sire is Royal Appearance (and his dam is Foxy Lady), so I needed a name that started with "R". Of course, the first thing I do is go to Irish Baby Names, and right away I found the best name for this foal.
Riordan, pronounced reer+don, and meaning royal poet. I don't think there could be a better name for Royal Appearance's march 17th foal. The only way it could be more fitting would be if they were Irish Sport horses!

Anyway, I'm getting off track. After looking at Irish names for a while, and thinking about pedigrees, I started to get curious about my own family. So, after some quick Google searching I found some neat sites with a ton of information. I highly recommend going to Ancestry.com and putting your surname into the search. Once you do that check out all the cool information like most common professions in 1880, and life expectancy compared to normal.
I also found a website called Fianna, which has a wealth of information about Irish families. From this website I found, what I think is the coolest find of the day. There is a link to information about Celtic toes, toes which, although I don't have exactly- can be seen in my feet. My toes are a bit more angular than the typical Celtic toe, but the years of trait degradation from intermarrying and whatnot can account for that. The narrow shape, and region of the big toe described on other websites, are all traits I posses.

Since this discovery, I looked a bit more into Celtic traits and it turns out I have many of them. There is defiantly Celtic ancestry in my family. One website described traits possessed by Celtic women, and if my family don't have them, I must be blind. The second picture of Cyllene Wilson especially bears resemblance to my family. If you cover up her hair, I bet I can find I picture of my mom that looks very similar.