The ancestry on both of my sides is British, primarily. My surname, Graham, is a Scottish name, but we only have theories on how the Grahams came to be in America; no record of my immigrant ancestor is currently available. My grandfather's theory is that a Graham became an Ulster Scot in the early or mid seventeenth century. One of his sons had five sons, all of whom emigrated from Northern Ireland to Pennsylvania together around the year 1700. Over the course of several generations, they gradually moved south to Virginia, North Carolina, and then South Carolina. But that's all theory, and partially based on the family tradition of my tenth cousin, who theoretically would be the descendant of a different brother, I think. My branch of the family has no real family tradition.
My mother's side is both Scottish and English, from the Borden, Bagwell, and Tucker families.
I'm closer to my mother's side of the family than I am my father's.
My maternal grandparents live in the same city that I grew up in. My maternal grandfather was born in a small town called Yantis, Texas, which currently has a population of about three hundred. He graduated high school at 16 (skipping two years) in order to... become a cotton farmer. He was a cotton farmer when he was drafted into World War 2 in 1944. He spent a lot of time studying at different universities while in the Army, and finally went to Europe in late 1944 where he helped mop up the mess. He re-enlisted and stayed in Germany during 1946, which is when he came home and went to college on the GI Bill. There at Texas Christian University he met my grandmother, who was five years younger than him. He went to graduate school at Rice University and while there figured out how to solve the general quintic using ultraradicals (which, at the time, had never been done before - don't ask me what that actually means, though). He tried his hand at doctoral school but dropped out. He went to work for General Dynamics, doing very early work on computer programming, and stayed there most of his career until he retired in the mid-eighties. A few years later he went back to work for another gas and oil company which doesn't exist anymore. He finally retired around the year 2000. He is an avid genealogist and a total hypochondriac these days at the ripe age of 84. We get along extremely well. He's basically left me his entire library, which is a rather extensive collection of books on everything imaginable.
My maternal grandmother grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and went to Texas Christian University where she met my grandfather. She majored in Biology, I think. She taught the third grade for awhile after college, but pretty quickly became a homemaker. She likes to sew. She is 80. Both of my maternal grandparents are cancer survivors - my grandfather had his prostate zapped about five years ago, and my grandmother has survived bouts with both colon and breast cancer.
They had three children, of which my mother is the middle child. Their first, my uncle, works as a geologist and has two step-children, my step-cousins, one of whom just graduated high school and the other of whom will be going into high school. He has been married twice, but had no children with either (both of his wives had already had kids from previous marriages). My aunt, the youngest child in that family, lives in Oklahoma. She and her husband are very, very conservative, and I probably wouldn't get along with them if they weren't family, but I get along well with their children, my cousins, one of whom is my age and the other of whom is 18. The two of them, a boy and a girl, are the closest cousins to my sister and me. We see each other every few months.
My mother grew up in Fort Worth, going to the same middle school and high school as I would and attending Stephen F. Austin State University in East Texas. She majored in management, I think. Something businessy. She works as the accounting manager for a branch of Habitat for Humanity.
I don't know a lot about my paternal grandparents. They died in 1999 and 2004, and I was never very close to them. They lived about three hours away. I know that my grandfather was an inventor and salesman, among other things. My grandmother worked for the Texas Rangers (the law enforcement group). They moved around a lot, living in Birmingham, Alabama; Tyler, Texas; and Houston, Texas. They were lifetime smokers, and my grandfather died of a heart attack in 1999 (after he had chest pains he was too stubborn to call 9-1-1 and so tried to drive himself to the hospital; he passed out en route). My grandmother had a stroke in 1998, and later died of kidney and congestive heart failure in 2004.
They had five children, of which my father is the middle. The oldest fought in the Navy during Vietnam and kind of lost touch with the family for many years. He died of a stroke around 2000 or 2001. The second oldest lives near Houston, Texas, with her second husband. The child from her first marriage, my cousin, is about twelve years older than me and works in the Air Force doing computer work. He and his wife have two very cute children who I feel weird considering the generation below me. They're like 10 and 7 or something. Then came my dad, who grew up in Tyler and Houston and went to Stephen F. Austin State, where he met my mom. More on him later. Their fourth child lives in San Antonio as a car salesman. He has two children, who are each a year older than me and my sister (22 and 25). We get along when we see each other, but that's basically only at Christmastime. The youngest aunt lives somewhere in the mid-Cities areas between Dallas and Fort Worth. She is a lesbian, and very cool. Somehow the fact that she's a lesbian doesn't seem to affect how conservative the rest of my dad's family is. They just seem to ignore it, and never, ever bring it up. She's had the same partner for as long as I've been alive.
As stated previously, my dad went to Stephen F. Austin State, where he also majored in something business-y, and met my mom there. He is an inside salesperson for a coil tubing manufacturer.
They eventually moved to Fort Worth in around 1983, where they had two children. My sister, Kristen, is 24 and is finishing up photography school. She got her BA in Graphic Design. I'm 21. So yeah. This is my family.
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Originally Posted by Rye
which is in Wales so I sometimes see her family but there's nothing much to talk about as they're all CROESO Y GYMRU nutjobs and I don't know that they're saying
