Inhereted Mythology

My family doesn't really have a single coherent mythology.  We're utter mutts, though the family tree is punctuated with mythic figures.  Or, as I once told a friend of questionable values in a state of questionable sobriety, "my family's all pirates, rebels, injuns and n*****s."

The pirate captain Henry Morgan, the namesake of Captain Morgan rum, is an uncle of mine, on my father's side, a few dozen generations ago.  I've told the story of his conquest of Jamaica at more than a few gatherings, with more than a little Captain in me.  If I were a direct descendent, I'd actually be a Fitzmorgan, as I am also related to one of his slaves.

On my mother's side, I'm descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence, James Smith of Pennsylvania.  As Irish blood probably constitutes the greatest single percentage of my descent, through my Grandfather, and because my mother's side of the family have lived in Pennsylvania for as long as they care to recount, this portion of my origin story is extremely important to my grandparents and their antecedents, more important than it is to my parents or to me.  It is likely a more important part of my brother's mythic origin than mine, as well.  He was born on the 4th of July, and for a long time he surrounded himself with anything he could that was Revolutionary or Red White & Blue.

Perhaps the strongest mythic roots I have were pushed aside and buried by many previous generations in my family.  I have Lenape Indian blood.  According to the story (as my mother and uncle tell it), I am descended from a clan chief.  For hundreds of years before I was born, this story was suppressed, because it was shameful for a white woman to have married a Native American man.  However, my NA descent is probably the most important part of my family history to one of my uncles.

More recent mythic figures and stories include my great-grandpa Davis, a half-indian farmer married to a temperance union woman, who kept moonshine whiskey in his barn with his mules and grew marijuana in his back field, and my grandpa Bell, who was a radio man in a B-52 that made the Burma run from India.  He once saved his entire crew by refueling the plane, on his own and against orders, before a short base-to-base hop that turned into a debacle when the Japanese attacked and the pilot got lost.