shan

shan

Friday, August 16, 2013

My Name is...

My husband can trace his ancestry back to Prussia! No kidding. I had to look Prussia up to even figure out where it is, something to do with Germany. Anyhow, I've never been a "trace my family history" kinda person, but as my kids get older I get more, and more questions. Questions I don't have the answers to. Let's just say that in the Bahamas we don't keep family records well. You can't just pop into a library and trace your roots back a 100+ years like say my husband's family. Most of what I know of my family is via oral traditions, stories that have been told and retold for generations. One thing that has puzzled me from quite sometime was my maiden name. Jackson. Where in the world did that come from? While the name is quite common in the US, it's extremely rare in the Bahamas. Outside of my family (on my dad's side) I knew, nor had ever met anyone there with that name. As recently as this week someone of Bahamian descent upon hearing my maiden name suggested that I was probably in the witness protection program, because he'd never heard of anyone having that name in the Bahamas. I got quite a laugh out of it. My dad just happens to be in town so I mentioned that comment to him. He got a kick out of it too, but then he gave me something. He gave he a short history lesson. The gist of it was how our family got the name Jackson. Turns out my great grandmother (on my dad's side) went to Florida to work in the fields. There she met and married American gentleman, whose last name was Jackson. He moved back to the Bahamas with her, and so began the Jacksons of the Bahamas. It's nice to connect something like this. All this time my only stories, and memories of my name was that no one else in my country had it.  We were actually teased pretty badly for having it. I can't say that blame them. My mom and dad had the audacity, to have five kids with the last name Jackson!!  Do you see where this is going? Yep, we were the Jackson 5! Those were the breaks if you grew up in my day with such a name. I guess by comparison to others being called, Michael, Tito, Janet, Marlon or Latoya Jackson wasn't so bad. All of that aside, I always liked that my name was unique to my surroundings. I'm thrilled that I now know why.

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