My mother was big into genealogy.
She tried to trace our family tree back to the Egyptians one time, and tried to tell me we were directly related to Cleopatra, but I wasn’t having any of it.
She then told me our European descendants founded Hillsboro, OR in the early 1800s, according to what she had found online. They loved the mild winters and warm summers which made Oregon a rich farming area. I looked at her one day as she was talking about our rich history, and asked her why we looked more like the Indians that once inhabited the Hillsboro, OR area? She stumbled and said that was just my dad’s side of the family. I reminded her how the Kalapuyans once lived in this area even before the Europeans arrived, but she poo-pooed that. The Kalapuyans were still a part of the Grand Ronde, even though many intermarried with other tribes, and some intermarried with the Europeans. She thought this proved that the Europeans were the most important. Without the Kalapuyans, there would be no dad, and no me, but mom completely ignored that information. She was just happy her European descendants loved the climate in this area, and decided to stay. Her family came to Hillsboro, OR in the early 1900s and she had no reason to ever want to move anywhere else. I thanked her for making that decision. I enjoyed living in Hillsboro, OR, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, regardless of who my distant family was or wasn’t. I liked the weather we had in this area.