One of the few lonely posts today, as I get ready for the weekend. the friday five
1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from?
Testerman is from the British Isles, and luckily so is my family, so it sort of works out: I’m English paternally, and Scottish from my mom’s side. ("Donnachaidh" split down into several families, one of which was "Connochie" which became ‘Conkey’ when it got to America. The clan’s ancestors were known to the Romans as the Kaledonioi, one of the eleven tribes of the northern Pictish nation, inhabiting the part of Scotland now known as Atholl in Perthshire. You can read more about it (and hunt down Scottish ancestors) here.
2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit?
I’d like to return to the British Isles in general, actually, visiting London, Scotland and Wales for various family-related reasons.
3. Which would you least like to visit? Why?
Well, if I had to choose, I’d probably drop Scotland off the list, since I’ve seen cold, rocky farmland before.
4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognize your heritage?
Nope.
5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country (parents, grandparents, etc)?
We joke that the Testerman’s were on the Mayflower roster. Slight exaggeration, that, but not by a whole lot. There were two Testerman’s (possibly father and son) in the Virginia landowners polls taken in the decades following the revolution (there’s still a Testerman farm in Virginia), and my grandmother’s maiden name was Hale, which at least one crazy great-aunt claims to have traced back to Nathan Hale’s immediate family.
My great-grandparents homesteaded to South Dakota when my great grandmother was… 14, which puts it somewhere around 1910, and they were at least third-generation Virginians… well, it goes back awhile.
It’s not a common name, but we’ve got representatives from the east coast to Seattle.
