A slave named Bob to have, hold & enjoy

When I'm really busy, I am known to punch family names into Ancestry.com in the oddest hours of the night or morning. It settles me down.

So one jittery night I type 'Edney,'a name from my mother's maternal line in Tennessee. No one knows much about the Edneys; we have relatives named Rainey and Dunnagan. The Edney's, and the Jones's have all but disappeared.

Several hours later, I come across a series of online conversations in a genealogy site, about the Edneys of North Carolina.

I leap into the conversation, which has been going on for about 7 years, and try to reach a couple of people, many of whom may be dead, because genealogy is an old person's hobby. For the record, I'm not old, but I'm obsessed with where I come from, like I'm the silky threads of a blown dandelion, trying to find my way back.

A 76 year-old man named Earl Peeler who lives in Tampa gets right back to me online. We exchange emails. We're like two knights in armour approaching each other on horseback, our lances drawn. Protecting a family line goes way back in evolution, and first we must establish our credentials.

I cite my direct descendants; he cites his. "I am Patricia of Samuel Edney, son Robert Edney and Ann Rensher." He comes right back: "And I am Earl of Asa Edney, son of Robert Edney and Ann Rensher."

Okay, that's over. So we're related. We are something like first cousins, ten times removed. That means our common ancestors were brothers, a long, long, long time ago. And their father was our direct descendant. This tight bond established, he agrees to send me pieces of the Edney genealogy, a 47 year-old project he says will 'probably get dumped in the trash when I'm gone.'

For the record, Robert Edney was born between 1690 and 1710 in England, and settled his family in Pasquotank, North Carolina, buying up land, and slaves.

These are my people. I know this from a two-page typed family history someone passed to me decades ago. Whoever it was found it in a family bible I think. And I have this bible. It's wrapped in blue-and-white-hopsacking material, in a white garbage bag, and lain in a plastic storage bin on the floor of a spare room closet.

It's three days later. I'm nearly finished with my ancestry orgy. What have I got to show for it?

1. Secure knowledge that I have the Edney family bible, written in by Newton Edney, Robert's grandson, born before the Revolutionary War, January 1, 1763 to be exactly. My Uncle Ammon got it for me, from my mother's first cousin, Christine.

2. Reasonable speculation that Newton had a mistress named Parmelia, possibly an African-American woman who bore two children with Newton, named Eliza and Mary. They are listed as Negro births by a man who had quite a few slaves (13). Why else are they listed in the family bible? And why else is Parmelia's marriage to William Bray recorded there? And why else is she listed in Newton's will?

3. Confirmation that my early Edney line is comprised of land-owners who had slaves at every generation up to the Civil War, including 'Bob' who shows up in a will, a piece of property for the bequeathee 'to have, hold and enjoy.'

4. Three locks of hair, carefully bound, one wrapped in a tiny piece of paper labeled 'Eccleses.'

5. Many pressed flowers.

6. A post card from my great great grandfather John Wesley Jones, to his son-in-law, John Dunnagan, asking to be picked up at a train station Christmas Eve in Bon Aqua, Tennessee.

7. Leaflets advertising the new town of Rochester, New York, and Denton County Texas, the new frontiers.

8. A pencil scratched will signed by W. Nelson, my great-grandmother Dolly's brother-in-law.

9. A love poem by Viola Dunnagan, saying 'i love you but thats no youse.'

Fixed points

Now that Spring is just ahead, I linger outside as the edges of day smudge from burnt scarlet to soft purple. I'm awaiting the nighttime sky. With a great, familiar intention, I look for the few childhood constellations I still know. More than once--I remember a dock New Hampshire, and an Hawaii hot tub-- I have laid back against my arms to bask in the vastness of the black universe.

As a young teenager, my private universe was often asunder. Parents fighting, boyfriends coming and going, brothers to help raise, living from my roots, lots of home chores, schoolwork and piano practice always beckoning. It was way too much for one girl.

But. Many summer nights, long after the family was sleep, I propped my chin on a pillow nested in an upstairs bedroom windowsill, and searched for the comfort of constellations. Majestic, confident Orion. The happy, cocky, Big and Little Dippers. The huddled pack of Seven Sisters. The stars, seemingly immovable, were my family, fixed points of reference in a turbulent time. Watching them, charting them, remembering them--them usually eased me to sleep

They still are. And now that I've traveled all around the earth, and searched for roots ancient and ancestral, the stars have new meanings. Imagine the first people on earth migrating out of Africa and looking up: they saw these very same powerful, bright dots that I see tonight. Imagine: in a few hours, my friends in the Philippines, or Rwanda, will see nearly the same star-studded sky.

Younger, blessed and cursed with the gift of imagination, I used to ask the stars how I would survive if my parents got divorced, if my boyfriend stopped liking me, or I couldn't ever find my lost library books.

I still wonder. Standing in the driveway, peering up through our front tree, I ask myself the big, impossible questions of midlife. What will growing old be like? What does it feel like to be without parents? Will I, or my husband, die first? Will I live to see grandchildren? What legacies will I leave behind?

The sky still answers. The stars will always be there, it says. Count on it. Many havee, before you.

This settles me, and sleep comes.