| A bit about my genealogy, famous and/or wealthy relatives, etc. |
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Sunday, November 1st, 2015 07:35:04 GMT |
A relative of mine (from my mother's side of the family) has been looking into our genealogy, and she found out that we have ancestors named McNutt. :-)
I had no idea we had any Irish/Scottish roots, but I'm pleased we do. :-)
Now, if anyone ever calls me a nut, I can retort, "Wrong! I'm a McNutt!!" :-)
I still have never looked really deeply into our genealogy, so, there might be a lot more to our ancestry than that, and I might have some details confused.
My mother's side of the family is rumored to have a Native American woman somewhere in our background. We're not sure who, and don't know if that's true. But I hope it is true, that would be cool. :-)
My paternal grandfather, who died years before I was born, left Europe and came to the USA maybe even as early as 1930, if Ancestry.com is right.
So, my closest paternal relatives luckily probably weren't in Germany when Hitler rose to power, and certainly weren't there when World War 2 broke out. I guess my grandfather probably learned something from what happened to my great-grandfather (his father), who apparently just didn't expect the Russian Revolution and World War 1 to happen, and thus remained in Russia at a particularly terrible time in history to be an immensely wealthy German businessman in Russia.
However, if I recall correctly, my great-grandmother (my grandfather's mother) survived the World War 2 bombing of Dresden, and at some point she came to the USA to live with my grandfather's family.
Someday if I ever have more time on my hands, I'll probably take a much closer look at all this stuff, and write more about it.
If he had lived his life differently, perhaps he even would have been able to change the course of history. Perhaps he might have been able to help avert the Russian Revolution if he had taken a lot more interest in helping the poor to escape their miserable oppression.
Judging by his memoirs (which I read an English translation of years ago) - if I recall correctly, he seemed like a good-hearted, well-meaning person. But I guess he was just too oblivious and preoccupied with his own very opulent life to do very much with his immense wealth (and consequent power) to change the world for the better. I don't think he even fully realized that war and revolution were brewing.
But if I ever do get wealthy (or just comfortable), I will try to do what my great-grandfather (and every other rich, or more fortunate than average, person) should have done (or should do): try even harder than I already have to set everyone free from the oppression of poverty. (And any other oppression.)
I actually already am trying pretty hard, but in rather indirect ways, because unfortunately, my preferred direct solution - just handing out buckets of money (which would be debt-free grants, not loans) to good people who need it and will use it wisely - is not yet feasible, since I don't have buckets of money to give in the first place. :-/
Also, what I'm doing is pretty boring to write about if I focus only on what I'm actually doing at the moment, rather than my lofty (pie in the sky?) dreams of all the marvelous things it all might lead to in the future. :-)
I've been making a lot of progress with what I'm now calling Astroblahhh Desktop 2.8 - the update which will hopefully have everything converted to use UTF-8 Unicode.
What this actually might lead to in the end, who knows.
But, donations and microdonations are welcome.
A lot more is known about my father's side of the family than my mother's. I have English ancestry from I think both my mother and father, and German and I think also Russian from my father.
The most famous people I'm aware of being related to are:
Some of my paternal ancestors were extremely wealthy - but, that mostly got ruined by the Russian Revolution and World War 1, and probably World War 2 didn't help either.
So, if you ever wondered from whence did such an unusual person as I spawn - now you know a few more details.
If my great-grandfather had paid more attention to what was going on in the world, and perhaps left Russia (and maybe Europe too) for someplace safer - perhaps that part of my family might have remained immensely wealthy.
I'll be amazed if I ever manage to get wealthy, and rather surprised if I even manage to reach the middle class, given my horrible sleep issues, and the very worrying economic woes of the world at large, which have been making it deplorably difficult even for many very talented, competent, well-educated, and perfectly able-bodied people to make a living.
Anyway, for now, I'd rather not write in detail about what I'm up to - I'd rather just get back to doing it.