A Wasted Day..

In an effort not to think about politics, I wasted my day today at Ancestry.com. From father to son:

Thomas Farley, b. 1600 Worcester, England (arrived Virginia 1623)
John Farley, b. 1648 Charles City, Virginia
John Farley, b. 1670 Henrico, Virginia
Henry Farley, b. 1716 Henrico, Virginia
Josiah Farley, b. 1744 Henrico, Virginia
John Farley, b. 1770 Bath, Virginia
William Farley, b. 1811 Burke, North Carolina
Jason Leonidas “Pony” Farley, b. 1847 Jackson, North Carolina
Monteville Columbus Farley, b. 1884 Jackson, North Carolina
Kelly Paul Farley, b. 1914 Missouri
Michael Harriman Farley, b. 1945 Jackson, North Carolina
Robert Michael Farley, b. 1974 Jackson, North Carolina

There’s some interesting stuff, here; I had always assumed that the Farleys were hill people since time immemorial, but Henrico is just outside Richmond. Of course, this would still have been quite rural, but not so much with the hills. Bath is very much hill country, as are Burke and Jackson. On the upside, twice (in successive generations) the family tree fails to fork, as first cousins married one another. On my mother’s side I know less; I am the product of the rare single-parent household headed by a father, and information about my grandmother and great-grandmother is also unaccountably scarce.

Something else interesting; I may have a Jewish ancestor. Elizabeth Corzine, who lived from 1702-1774, is my something-like-eight-greats-grandmother. Corzine is by far the most exotic name in my patrilineal heritage; the next most exotic is Connelly, and the rest are all standard English. I am told that there are some sephardic Jews named Corzine, and it turns out that Elizabeth named her last three sons Moses, Isaac, and Jacob. Those, along with a couple of other traditional Jewish names, lasted for a couple of generations in the family before dying out.