I found some more old time Stricklans!

Once upon a time in November of last year I was stumped about my Stricklan line of ancestry. There was an Abel Stricklan (Stricklin/Strickland/Stracklin, depending on the source) in Virginia but he had no parents or siblings. It was like poor little Orphan Abel.

I searched through as many records as Family Search had to find more information about Mr. Abel, and since I thought he was our Civil War relative I was very surprised not to find anything besides later census records with no more information than I already knew. He was just a line end.

This week at our Young Women activity we got all the girls signed up for Family Search so they could start looking for their ancestors, and one of the ward members who was helping suggested again that if we couldn't find any documents to help further our line, we could try looking at ancestry.com, since people with an LDS account get a free membership there too. When he said tha,t I thought, yeah, I really ought to look there (especially since my friend Coppelia had mentioned it months ago and I thought I'd like to check it out then, but I didn't).

Let's sum up the next two hours real quick because the process of looking at, confirming, and linking records to your ancestors takes a lot more time than it would seem: I LOOKED and there were RECORDS of Abel at Ancestry.com, and once I put his father Samuel in, I got Joseph (his father) and Samson (his father) too. I got some more on the maternal sides of these lines as well, but it's going to take me a long time to catch up with the records I found. Those Stricklans have been 'Mercans for a very long time (which explains my dad's patriotism) (which is only a joke if you know my dad) (which is not to imply that he's super unpatriotic but if you don't get the joke it may sound that way) (that's probably enough explanation).

As it turns out, Abel wasn't in the Civil War (his son William was, whom I already knew about but didn't have any Civil War records for). I don't have any pictures of Abel, but here is a very happy looking William with his wife Nancy--and I think I see some of Calvin's/my/my dad's/my grandpa's cheekbones peeking up over that snowy beard.

lately: a friend, some Scottish music and the end of the Stricklan line

I haven't been doing or thinking very much about family history lately, but within the last day a couple of things have brought it back to the front of my mind. (In order from understandable association to abstract absurdity.)

1. A friend of mine (Hi Coppelia!) told me that her grandma has recently passed away and she is now very busy going through the house her grandma lived in for the last 60+ years. She is coming across a lot of cool old things and stories and histories that are changing the way she has thought of her grandparents her whole life.

2. I bought an old mirror and hung it across from our weird little portrait of a lady. They're both old, like my ancestors.

3. I have been listening to Kate Rusby while I clean the kitchen this morning, particularly this song, which for some really unaccountable reason makes me cry every time I hear it. It also makes me try to remember which, if any, of my actual ancestors are from Scotland. If they are so far back, anyway, why do I feel such a connection with them and that rainy, sheepy country? I loved it so much while I was there, just as much as I thought I would. Jocelyn, of course, always talked about the British Isles with a lot of love, but more particularly Ireland than Scotland. So I wonder what it is. Why do I love you, Scotland?


These three things brought me to look at my family tree again, but then I got distracted from Scotland by Stricklans (oops, sorry, Scotland!). I don't see why these Stricklan lines peter out so early. My brothers Jesse and Tim have looked up the surname "Stricklan," and it comes from Northern England (pretty close to Scotland!), and several notable Strickland emigrants came to North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Since our Abel was from Virginia, I am going to assume for now that he came from one of those early immigrants. But how do I find out for sure, and which one? I need to find a professional genealogist to help me. (And come to think of it, if I had known it was an option I would have become a professional genealogist myself. Then I could have me help me.)