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| Just in case anyone was wondering, here is my latest DNA update. No surprises. The Lyons are Scotish/English and all my Cajun peeps are French. I honestly have no idea where the Native American comes from. |
Hi there!
My name is Lori Lyons and I am a genealogy addict.
Here in Louisiana, we call people like me a Heinz 57.
For 57 varieties. Or a gumbo... maybe a spicy jambalaya.
I belong to the 5th generation of Lyons in Louisiana, descended from Joseph Lucius Cincinatus Pitt Lyon, who came south from Illinois in 1849.
I have been putting together my family tree since the early 1990s. It was my grandmother who did all the work. The granddaughter of three different Louisiana plantation owners, she spent much of her free time chasing down relatives.
Like all good recipes, this will be a work in progress. Feel free to add your own ingredients -- give a little, take a little. And don't be afraid to let me know if you find a mistake. Genealogy is not an exact science.
So come on in. Sit a spell and take a look around. You might be related -- an ingredient in our family gumbo.
If so, welcome to the family!
Lori Lyons
Louisiana
The first step is to admit it, right? I am one of those people who stays up to the wee hours of the morning, trying to find the missing pieces of my family puzzle. I'm also not too shy to ask "who were your people?" to see if we may have a family connection.
I am the daughter of an English-Cajun man and an Irish-German woman. Their parents -- all born in Louisiana -- were a mixture of Cajun, English, French, Irish and German. Half of them were born in the big city of New Orleans, the other half down the bayou in Houma.
Here in Louisiana, we call people like me a Heinz 57.
For 57 varieties. Or a gumbo... maybe a spicy jambalaya.
I also am a Mayflower descendant and can claim a very thin link to the Royal Family of England (Queen Liz and I are 20th cousins once removed.). Some trees have me as the 15th great-granddaughter of King Ferdinand I and Queen Isabella II of Spain (but probably not).
I belong to the 31st generation of Lyons descended from Roger de Leonne, the first known of our esteemed line. I am the 12th generation of Lyon/Lyons in America, descendent from William Lyon, "The Immigrant," who came to Massachusetts from Harrow, England in 1635.
I belong to the 5th generation of Lyons in Louisiana, descended from Joseph Lucius Cincinatus Pitt Lyon, who came south from Illinois in 1849.
I have been putting together my family tree since the early 1990s. It was my grandmother who did all the work. The granddaughter of three different Louisiana plantation owners, she spent much of her free time chasing down relatives.
I would walk into her house and find her slumped over her dining room table, surrounded by books and scraps of paper. Sometimes she was asleep. I found quite a few papers with her pen mark scribbling off the page as she dozed off. I can only imagine what she might have accomplished if she had the Internet.
When she died in 1988, my mother asked me to go through Grannie's papers to see what was there. I spent a weekend hunched over my own dining room table -- and dozed off a few times myself. And I was hooked.
I think we have a fascinating story -- Knights, queens, kings, orphaned children placed on ships to the new world, entire families wiped out in a single shipwreck, soldiers, Patriots, plantations, Cajuns expelled from their homes, Civil War rebels.
When she died in 1988, my mother asked me to go through Grannie's papers to see what was there. I spent a weekend hunched over my own dining room table -- and dozed off a few times myself. And I was hooked.
I think we have a fascinating story -- Knights, queens, kings, orphaned children placed on ships to the new world, entire families wiped out in a single shipwreck, soldiers, Patriots, plantations, Cajuns expelled from their homes, Civil War rebels.
And yes, slave-owners.
I spent my life as a journalist -- a storyteller. It's up to me to tell this one.
Like all good recipes, this will be a work in progress. Feel free to add your own ingredients -- give a little, take a little. And don't be afraid to let me know if you find a mistake. Genealogy is not an exact science.
So come on in. Sit a spell and take a look around. You might be related -- an ingredient in our family gumbo.
If so, welcome to the family!
Lori Lyons
Louisiana
email: thelyonsdin@gmail.com
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