Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Westward Trek: A Sewell Family's Paternal Lineage
    A Westward Trek: A Sewell Family's Paternal Lineage
    A Westward Trek: A Sewell Family's Paternal Lineage
    Ebook179 pages1 hour

    A Westward Trek: A Sewell Family's Paternal Lineage

    By M. L. Sewell, Jr.

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Sewell family history utilizing both conventional and genetic genealogy. Appendices contain DNA test data and laboratory findings.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateAug 7, 2016
    ISBN9781365126079
    A Westward Trek: A Sewell Family's Paternal Lineage

    Related to A Westward Trek

    Related ebooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Case for Cats

      Oct 4, 2022

      The Case for Cats
      3 min read

    • Article

      Your LETTERS

      Nov 12, 2021

      Your LETTERS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Readers' Letters

      Jul 26, 2023

      SIR: I have just celebrated my 80th birthday and been much acclaimed by my family and friends. Even the government has got in on the act, as it has increased my state pension by 25p a week. Unfortunately, my village shop has hardly anything to offer

      5 min read

    • Article

      Young Hearts…

      Oct 24, 2017

      Young Hearts…
      3 min read

    • Article

      B.J. Hollars Explores the Midwest’s Strangest Corners

      Aug 27, 2019

      Mysteries aren’t something to be solved, but something to be embraced. We don’t need to conquer; we just need to be curious. For me, that’s where the revelation lives—in the not-knowing. The post B.J. Hollars Explores the Midwest’s Strangest Corners

      10 min read

    • Article

      Your LETTERS

      Sep 11, 2020

      I was inspired to write in to you to encourage beginners to family history always, always, always to look at original documents. I have been looking back at my branch of the Dunn family in Bermondsey, who seemed to have the habit of calling their off

      6 min read

    • Article

      From Our Readers

      Jun 11, 2022

      From Our Readers
      2 min read

    • Article

      Flicking The switch

      Aug 5, 2022

      Flicking The switch
      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      The purpose of being alive is to carry a sequence of code.And so, being adopted, I’m part of a plot, a sleeper cellin enemy territory, quietly working against the systemfrom within. It’s fall, I’m on an ancestry website signing up for a DNA kit,becau

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Way Home

      Feb 4, 2022

      The Way Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Way Home

      Feb 5, 2022

      The Way Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      Distant Relations

      Jan 27, 2020

      Distant Relations
      4 min read

    • Article

      Bundles

      Feb 15, 2021

      Bundles
      4 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      Jeff McGill’s Family History Research Tips

      Apr 11, 2023

      My top tip for family history research is ‘don’t give up’. Where one door closes, another usually opens. I knew from the family folklore that Rachel Kennedy had been brutally tossed out of her teenage home, Mulgo, around 1860–61, but I couldn’t find

      1 min read

    • Article

      Bushytails and Blackpowder

      Mar 15, 2022

      Bushytails and Blackpowder
      5 min read

    • Article

      My Grandfather’s Marbles

      Mar 13, 2024

      My Grandfather’s Marbles
      5 min read

    • Article

      Into the Wild

      Feb 28, 2019

      Into the Wild
      3 min read

    • Article

      Your Letters

      Apr 12, 2024

      I enjoy the thoughts and stories expressed by Diane Lindsay in every issue of Family Tree magazine. But her latest contribution in the February 2024 issue topped them all. We have very different backgrounds, her having been born and raised in an old

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 23, 2023

      The unofficial Christmas truce of 1914 certainly did occur [Mythconceptions #263, FT426:19]. In her book 1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War, Lyn Macdonald, the noted historian of WW1, quotes Lieut Johannes Niemann of the 133rd Royal Saxon

      11 min read

    • Article

      Testaments Of Youth

      Mar 9, 2022

      The majority of adults believe they become better people as they grow older. So said the Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter, in his excellent study The Seven Sins of Memory (2001). But that process, he adds, requires us to mark down our younger sel

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Westward Trek

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Westward Trek - M. L. Sewell, Jr.

      Notes

      Remember me in the family tree;

      my name, my days, my strife.

      Then I'll ride upon the wings of time

      and live an endless life.

      –Linda Goetsch

      Figure 1: The Ancient Ones.

      Cover Design by M. L. Sewell, Jr.

      Cover photo by Richard Olsenius / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC / Getty Images.

      A Westward Trek:

      A Sewell Family’s Paternal Lineage

      M. L. Sewell, Jr.

      Copyright © 2016 M. L. Sewell, Jr. All rights reserved.

      The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you exclusively for your personal use. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: www.lulu.com.

      First Edition: 2016

      ISBN: 978-1-365-12607-9

      To Marla Christine, Matthew Lamar, Martin Perry,

      Marilyn Rena, and Mason Zachary.

      Preface

      Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.

      –Michael Crichton, Timeline

      If you’ve ever had the urge to know where you came from or who your ancestors were, you are not alone. This book is about my curiosity, the journey it enticed me to embark upon, and what I gleaned along the way.

      That journey began years ago early one Saturday morning in mid-summer. A cousin and I awoke before daybreak and quietly packed sack lunches. We each pocketed about a dollar’s worth of .22 rounds along with the bolts of our rifles. Once outside, I recruited my grandfather’s favorite dog to join our hunting expedition. Upon seeing the rifles, our four-legged partner was eager to accompany us.

      At sunrise, we were off to roam the woods surrounding my grandparents’ farm in southwest Arkansas.

      Around noon and after more competitive target practice than hunting, we each had only a few rounds remaining. We stopped to eat. Then, with sated bellies and empty lunch sacks, it hit us—we did not know where we were.

      In my family, hunting was a tradition and encouraged by our elders; however, getting lost was not. With more than a little feigned bravado, we attempted to impress each other with estimates as to how far we might be from an open field or a road and in which direction either might be. Neither of us, however, dared broach the subject of having forgotten to carry a compass. It was during this moment of puerile reckoning that we were struck by the second epiphany of the day: we were sitting in front of an old, partially burned and boarded-up homestead that time and neglect had camouflaged in dense undergrowth.

      Figure 2: The Merchants and Farmers Bank note co-signed by M. P. Sewell.

      Closer inspection only piqued our curiosity. Weathered planks that had once been stationed to guard the portals of the old structure had now succumbed to rot and no longer performed their duty. A waxing sense of adventure overwhelmed any worries of being lost and quelled any concerns for what hazards might lurk within. We grew fearless: we had our guns; we had our dog. Thus emboldened, and with little effort, we invaded the long-abandoned property.

      While I paused to allow my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, I spied an odd looking piece of paper at my feet. It was an old Merchants and Farmers Bank promissory note with a couple of signatures. It framed one in particular that seized my interest: M. P. Sewell (see Figure 2, above). That moment is forever etched in my memory.

      My pulse quickened a bit and goose bumps arose even though I had no clue as to who this person was or had been. A bit unnerved at such an occurrence, I pondered my discovery and considered placing it back where I had found it…otherwise, it could be viewed by some as theft. And, the latter was something of which I wanted no part. However, I reasoned that taking it was not theft but, rather, preservation. Preserving the document struck me as the nobler option. Furthermore, since one of the names it contained could almost be taken to be mine, with the exception, of course, being the middle initial, I had a certain right, if not obligation, to do so. At least, that was my rationale.

      Standing there, in the dark, dilapidated structure, I made a decision. And, confident in the virtuous nature of that decision, I carefully placed the old note in my shirt pocket. In so doing, a dormant seed of ancestral curiosity germinated.

      We returned to my grandfather’s farm later that afternoon—the ammo was spent and the wily game had eluded us. Our faithful canine companion, however, had never lost his bearings and, perhaps out of sheer boredom, headed home as the day waned. Fortunately, we brave and fearless hunters were humble enough to follow his lead.

      My cousin and I later took some ribbing about being out all day with no game to show for it. Regardless, after supper that night I discreetly made certain that my day’s find was tucked safely between the pages of my journal.

      ~~~~~~

      As the years passed, it became obvious that I was not the only one in my family who had no inkling as to our origins. Such apparent indifference was frequently a source of frustration and even irritation to me.

      Despite my best efforts, knowledge of my family history went no further back than a couple of generations. It was if my ignorance was colluding with my unsophisticated methodology and lack of resources to continually thwart progress.

      ~~~~~~

      Later, while attending university, my resolve to discover my origins never waned; however, I would inevitably find myself standing flat-footed, forlorn, and glaring at a proverbial, daunting, and intangible but nonetheless impenetrable brick wall.

      Then, in one of these unsuccessful forays, I was referred to the Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research in Houston, Texas. There, a serendipitous moment awaited me. It came with the discovery of a small, unassuming, blue cloth-bound book by one Worley Levi Sewell, Sr. It represented this man’s effort to record the collective knowledge he had of the Sewell family at the time of its publication, 1955.

      As I anxiously perused the chapters, I immediately recognized two names. Then I soon discovered several others who, although unfamiliar to me at the outset, turned out to indeed be in my branch of the family tree. This little book transported me back several additional generations.

      As I finished my notes in the library, I realized that I had made—or rather had been granted—what I felt to be a huge leap forward in my family’s genealogy. My resolve and my future research efforts were duly bolstered.

      ~~~~~~

      As the Internet came into being, a phenomenon-in-progress grabbed my attention. It has since come to be called genetic genealogy and it would eventually illuminate my ancestors’ paths much further back in time than I had ever imagined possible.

      By the beginning of the new millennium, science and technology had put the availability and cost of DNA testing within reach of the general public.

      My early testing, first in Oxford¹ and then in Houston², surprisingly established and confirmed, respectively, that my paternal lineage’s origins are indeed Norse Viking (Danish).

      The latest testing involves BritainsDNA® of the UK.³ The latter couples—perhaps arguably so—an improved DNA analytical process with associated databases unique to the British Isles. The latter effectively serves to refine the initial results from both Oxford (actually, it’s now Littlemore, just to the south) and Houston.

      ~~~~~~

      Thus, a chance discovery of an ancestor’s signature on an old bank note that had lain hidden for decades on the floor of a secluded, partially destroyed farmhouse began my quest; the opportune discovery of a privately published family genealogy provided a much needed injection of historical information; and then learning of my genetic origins, as brought to light by DNA testing, finally led to this, my own saga.

      M. L. Sewell, Jr.

      Prologue

      Information is not knowledge.

      –Albert Einstein

      I have assumed that the reader has a basic familiarity with and understanding of genetics. However, footnotes, relevant appendices, and a glossary are provided. Additionally, for those interested, a bibliography is included that lists supplemental reading materials (see Further Reading).

      In addition, the websites of genealogical testing companies⁴ often provide online videos and weblogs that can further assist the interested reader.

      Please note that I am by profession neither a biologist nor a geneticist. Thus, the reader is forewarned.

      It is appropriate here to state two important features of this book: what it is and what it is not.

      First, what it is not:

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1