Banana Boat, No Smiths in Israel, and A New Descendant Chart - Part 51s

Good Evening,

And you never know what you might see when you enter banana boat and Jamaica into a Google search... Just watch the video and check out the eggplants.

I never said the search for ancestors would be an easy one... especially since my surname is Smith. But this morning I got some biblical confirmation that it would definitely not be an easy task. From the 1st book of Samuel, chapter 13 and verse 19 it states: "Now there were no smiths found throughout all the land of Israel...."

There you go, not one Smith!

And in Charles Wareing Bardsley's A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames With Special American Instances, published in New York in 1901 he writes on page 699 "Common to every village in England, north, south, east, and west... There are 300,000 Smiths in England..." Bardsley includes older variations which include: Smyth, Smythe, Smeythe, Smeyth, and Smyght.

Well I guess I'm not too surprised... My ancestral trek, aka my migration as plotted via FamilyTreeDNA, started in Africa 60,000 years ago and crossed the Saudi Arabian pennisula into southeastern Asia. 30,000 years later the "Rs" decided to split up, R1s going north and west while the "R2s" headed east and south. Then I guess it pays mind that no one had time to stop in at Israel. Hence no Smiths in Israel! They all headed to the British Isles. (It is amazing how one can twist a bit of literature to fit any story...)

In my search I've decided at this point to gather as much as I can regarding my paternal blood line. I need to discover from where my ggg-grandfather James Smith arrived at Grenada. This will take some time gathering and analyzing all the data and information that I have collected over the past couple of years. I've created a new Descendant Chart beginning with my ggg-grandfather James Smith. My immediate goal is to gather, analyze and organize all documentation that I currently have on file for each of my Smith ancestors.



You'll notice that in the title I have labeled the Part number as Part 51s. As this reporting is becoming a tad confusing to me I decided that at this time I would add a letter to the Part number designation to be a key to identify the major surname that a specific posting refers to. In this case it is my Smith line, hence Part 51s. The next one could be Part 52a or Part 52j. The "a" and the "j" in these examples represent Abraham or July, respectively.

Tonight's supper - eggplant, zucchini, onion, garlic, red chili peppers, fresh oregano and basil, and mozzarella cheese pie.

Enjoy,

Jim