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Welcome to WHEATON WOOD!
This site hosts the Beginner’s Guide to Genetic Genealogy originally written in 2011 with occasional revisions ; Wheatonwood Blog Posts, the WHEATON Database of Jean WHEATON; the WHEATON DNA Project; Rehoboth Massachusetts Resources, WHEATON Specific Resources, SHELDON AND finally assorted Personal Genealogy.
We know what we don’t know. It’s in our bones, in our shared DNA. It’s the call of the ancestors, of places and kin we are drawn to, whether we know the reason or not. Have you ever noticed how the places people settle are often similar to where they came from?—or why are you just ‘at home’ in some places and not others? Or some people just feel like you have known them forever although you just met. I do not believe that things are quite as random as we think……” Link to article Perhaps that’s why genealogy appeals to me. It starts as just a bunch of tangles and loose ends….*You unravel a section, get stuck, then over to another and work on that for awhile* get stuck repeat from first * endlessly. Occasionally you get a whole ball of yarn in which to make something with but those nagging tangles just pull you back in…
There are no rules with DNA. Some of our ancestors couldn’t read so they didn’t follow the instructions.
If there is one thing we need it is a fundamental understanding of statistics and analysis. Combine that with Murphy’s law and you get “whatever can happen, will happen and you can count on it not to happen when you expect it to.
“Our family trees are riddled with Riddles” from S99H99
From a wonderful Children’s book called If These Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge by Marc Aronson. National Geographic, Washington DC 2010 pg. 56: “Really it is about putting aside what you think you know, what has been passed along, and being willing to trust what you yourself see and to test it rigorously.”
“[Paul] Feyerabend believed that strict adherence to the scientific method would inhibit progress, and that a bit of anarchy is essential to good science. Further, the usual criteria, e.g. consistency and falsification, are antithetical to progress.” Anne Buchanan
“When you look in the mirror you see not just your face but a museum. Although your face, in one sense is your own, it is composed of a collage of features you have inherited from your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. The lips and eyes that either bother or please you are not yours alone but are features of your ancestors, long dead individuals but still very much alive as fragments in you. Even complex qualities such as your sense of balance, musical abilities, shyness in crowds or susceptibility to sickness have been lived before. We carry the past around with us all the time, not just in our bodies. It lives also in our customs, including the way that we speak. The past is a set of invisible lenses we wear constantly, and through which we perceive the world and the world perceives us. We stand always on the shoulders of our ancestors, whether of not we look down to acknowledge them.” ‘The Horse, the Wheel and Language’ by David Anthony
“Remember, beyond every brick wall… is another brick wall.” Dan Cerchi
Kelly Wheaton Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved.
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