2 Maternal grandmother’s side of the family
Williams and Cheely of Brunswick County
Zerubavel discusses how we form a, “lineage.” Our lineage consists of family members who share the same surname which projects an, “aura of continuity,” among generations. Also, lineage is commonly thought of as linear or a straight line and this dates back to Roman times where they used lines to represent connectedness (Zerubavel 2012). Currently, family lineages can also be thought of as chains which reach across multi-generational ties (Zerubavel 2012).
The Picture to the right is my grandmother whose maiden name was Cheely and her husband John, Kosec III.
The link above will open up to a document that traces my grandmother’s lineage which includes her 7 siblings and their children, and their children’s children. The story begins in 1622 with a Thomas Cheely, but it is not until 1796 that a proven descendant is traced, with a man by the same name, who passed away in Dinwiddie County. His son Joseph Cheely enlisted in February 1784 and fought in the Revolutionary War for 1 year, and was a private. He fought in Captain Peter Jones’ Co. in the 14th Virginia Regiment commanded by Col. William Davies.
My grandmother’s mother’s side of the family had a surname of Williams, and tracing back to the earliest generation of Williams (the second generation) had 11 children. Richard Jones Williams, my grandmother’s grandfather fought in all 4 years of the civil war. He was captured and imprisoned in Maryland for an undisclosed amount of time, but released at the end of the war.
Large families were common during this time in history as children were needed for labor and were thought of as a public good, essential for a good economy. He had a wife and 11 children which is the structural definition of family according to Burgess and Locke, as a group of people bonded together by blood, marriage, and or adoption (Ciabaratti 2017). They may also fall under the, “family as household,” definition as well, if they lived under the same roof and distributed resources (Ciabaratti 2017). The family structure displayed in this document mirrors the separate spheres ideology in which men were the breadwinner and the woman raised the children (Ciabattari 2017). Zerubavel discusses the passing on of names generation after generation and this holds true with both sides of my grandparents families (Zerubavel 2012).
John Kosec I was born in 1919 and him and my grandmother decided to elope. He was 18 and she was only 17, but they felt it was necessary because her family did not like him because he was from Pennsylvania, a Yankee. They referred to him as a foreigner. My grandmother did not speak to her family for many years as a result of this.