Tuesday, 3/8

I wonder if I'm related to any of them?

Like you, I've been watching the horror show unfolding in Ukraine, especially the one million-plus people forced to flee their home country for safety. Even though I know no one there, nor have I ever visited there, I still feel for them, and not just because that's what any human with a heart would do.

Some of them may be my distant relatives.

My mom's dad, the Schwemin side of my family, is descended from a Schwemin family that emigrated from Prussia to Marquette Township in the late 1800s. Specifically, the family came from a small village in Prussia, Stobno, that now sits in Poland about five miles from the German border. And while Ancestry says the DNA from that part of my family is German, there's a little something extra in there.

Specifically, my grandfather's great-grandmother (so my great-great-great grandmother) was either Polish or Ukrainian.

I haven't been able to find out much about her, as most of the records of that part of the family don't go any further back than the generation that came to the US. But the young lady who married into the Schwemin family was living in Stobno when she got married. Her parents were born somewhere to the east, somewhere else in the Prussian empire, and had moved to Stobno. While I don't know exactly where, Ancestry says that small 2% portion of my DNA falls into an area that covers the ever shifting border area between modern day Poland and modern day Ukraine. From somewhere in the blue section of this oval, part of which extends into modern-day western Ukraine--

Came the family of my great-great-great grandmother. Odds are, she came from the western portion of the oval, within the solid white circle sitting in the bigger blue oval.  But she could have come from anywhere in that bigger blue oval, which means, I guess, there's a very slight chance that someone with whom I share a common ancestor is being forced to flee for their lives.

I know that part of the world has always been the sight of conflict. I know that part of the world has always had shifting borders and conquering armies. But that was in the past. That's back when people were supposedly less civilized and a lot less interconnected. For it to be happening in the 21^st century, and for it to be happening because a totalitarian autocrat has (apparently) gone off his rocker, just seems unfathomable to me. Invading another country because...well, just because...is so 18^th or 19^th century. You wouldn't think it's something that would happen in the 21^st century. You'd think we would have moved on from little tantrums like that.

Sadly, you'd be wrong. And because of that, some of my potential distant relatives are paying the price. I hope—I really hope—that this ends soon, and that peace prevails. I'm getting the impression that it might not, but I certainly hope that it does.

After all, if not for the fact that one family moved west from that area and then married into another family that eventually came to the US, one of those people fleeing their home because of the invasion could potentially have been me.

(jim@wmqt.com)