Uriah got me thinking. Pamy, and Karen, Stormy, Darrell, are any of you interested in starting a round robin type Meilicke letter? None of you seem to know each other, yet you are all related. There is a Schnelle one that has been going for most of sixty years.
The question has arisen at to "what we are"? I can say with certainty that we are human, and that the Meilike (or Meilicke) portion crossed the Odor river in 1870. Beyond that little. I have been deluded by Tully seed, Schnelle blood, and numerous other generations. There was a Huguenot in the mix back five generations, and after all that, I cannot demonstrate that my parents were even the same species, for they produced no grandchildren. If that does not make sense to you the test for same species is fertile offspring.
It has been suggested that there is some jewish among some of the family, but I can discount that for myself as Jewishness is only carried in the maternal line by custom, and it does not matter anyway.
When I trace my maternal line back, as far as I can go is to Ann Maxwell, born in Ireland, 1739. As my father was also born in Ireland in 1901, I can say that I am of Irish extraction, by over 50% and little more. There is a suggestion that the Tully name came to Ireland about 1600, and more that it came with the return of some of the Wild Geese. http://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wild-geese-irish-abroad-1600-french-revolution
The name Meilike is not German, but I know that it is not Polish either, but the ike part suggest more south and east of there, Slovakia or Czechia area. But people have moves around due in part to war, local overpopulation and the like. Who know, and more to the point, how does that help me make a living?
Genealogy is a past time, to be discussed, but with all the illegitimacy and all the other questions of lineage, it is crude at best. If one was to go the DNA method, the reference samples are typically too small an time dependent to mean much. Through written history, we can find the Celts spread form the Black Sea to Ireland; there greatest fear was the sky falling, (meteorites) to now running out of beer. Not even the names on grave stones can be trusted. And then the family stories grow and wither as lining vines. Ah. In the end we all just die anyway.
