Descendant

“ What parent, or grandparent, to the remotest living generation, would receive a descendant with anything but a smile, or a welcome, let him come when and how he will? If there be not room, or preparation, the deficiencies must be made up in welcomes ”

“ Thus, of the children of a tall, thin, dark man, and a short, fat, fair woman, some will be like their father, and the others will resemble their mother, or, perhaps, all may "take after" either parent. Sometimes a child appears to be in every respect unlike its parents, and occasionally the likeness of an ancestor appears in a descendant, in whom no resemblance to his immediate progenitors can be detected. ”

“ The ancient superstition concerning the foster son of the white doe was counterbalanced by a new and later prejudice, and the father took the opportunity of presenting to the clan his long hidden son, whose youthful, but handsome and animated, countenance, haughty carriage, and active limbs excited the admiration of the clansmen, who joyfully received him as the heir and descendant of their chief, notwithstanding the ominous presage attending his birth and nurture. ”

“ Before we can accept the Hebrew genealogies as competent data for historical chronology, we must understand the principles on which they were framed. In ancient languages we have abundant evidence to show that the ties of blood were not as sharply distinguished as among ourselves. The same word sufficed to designate son and grandson, and even the most remote descendant. A man’s heir was called his son ”

“ Besides, he’s mine, and I want the triumph of seeing my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers’ lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives! ”

“ The spouse of a deceased person takes all personal and real chattels of the deceased.
2. For inheritance of land, if there are no descendant children, the brothers and sisters take alike, and if there are none, the next blood kin of the whole blood take, and if none, the land escheats to the lord. Land may never ascend from a son to his father or mother. ”

“ Who knows but that all the moon-faced people we encounter are descendants of this great descender. Or, dear brother lunatic, it may be that we may claim a celestial ancestry in his person, and that the idiosyncrasy which distinguishes us from common mortals, is the result of an instinctive longing for the bright former home of our common progenitor. ”

“ Even so are the descendants of families who were glorious in their generation, intent upon magnifying their fathers by eschewing to eclipse the brilliancy of ancestral fame. There are men of whose high descent we are only reminded by the impossibility to conceive what they could live on, unless it were on the inheritance of their fathers. ”

“ Failing father or husband, the unmarried daughters were placed under the guardianship of the nearest male members of the family. Thus the family, in the narrower sense in which we commonly use the word, as meaning descendants of a common father or grandfather, was, as it were, a single point of growth in a larger organism, the gens, which consisted of all those who shared a common ancestry. ”

“ Among males of equal degree in consanguinity to the purchaser, the elder excludes the younger; but females of the same degree take together as “coparceners.” 4. Lineal descendants take the place of their ancestor. Thus an eldest son dying and leaving issue would be represented by such issue, who would exclude their father’s brothers and sisters. 5. If there are no lineal descendants of the purchaser, the next to inherit is his nearest lineal ancestor. ”

“ Where descent is in the female line, as it was universally in the archaic period, the gens is composed of a supposed female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her female descendants, through females, in perpetuity; and where descent is in the male line—into which it was changed after the appearance of property in masses—of a supposed male ancestor and his children, together with the children of his male descendants, through males, in perpetuity. ”

“ All I know is that I can trace my own family for ten generations and that my tenth forefather told his son on his deathbed, for the saying has come down through his descendants—that when he was young She-who-commands had ruled the land for more scores of years than he could count months of life. ”

“ Thus the descendants of one American grandfather and grandmother will be found, after a lapse of a few years, scattered in every direction all over the land, and, indeed, sometimes all over the world. ”

“ I have examined the portraits of some three hundred other members of the royal families and find the same principles evident—that one sees strong general facial resemblance usually only among the closely related—but that striking peculiarities may jump a generation or two, and then reappear in some of the descendants. Also one sees that general blends are not common, but that each child tends to 'favor' one or the other of its parents or more rarely a distant ancestor. ”

“ We have sprung from the whole mass; they were all our direct ancestors; we are vitally related to them all, directly descended from them all. Heraldry follows only one line of succession, the line of the eldest surviving son, the line that carries name and title and landed property. It is commonly imagined that one standing in this line of succession is more truly a descendant than other descendants. It is supposed that the eldest sons all the way are more truly descendants than the progeny of younger sons, or the posterity of daughters who have lost the very name. ”

“ It is a pleasant fancy to imagine some ambitious hoarder of wealth, some egotistical founder of name and family, returning to find his descendants—HIS descendants—after the lapse of a few brief generations. ”

“ Our ancestors listened to the same legends, ballads, and mythical tales while gathered as children about one and the same mother, and they have handed them down to this generation of the descendants of each so little changed as to furnish ample proof of family relationship. ”

“ The descendants of the men who were foremost in every land are now content to sit on the same farm from generation to generation, caring for nothing, and having no ambition beyond raising a larger family than their neighbour. ”

“ And we are brought back to the point that in so far as the family group more or less may have resembled the Cymric gwely, and is approached from this point of view, it must be regarded as the group of descendants of a common grandfather or great-grandfather, who is, in the Archbishop’s phrase, the paterfamilias. While he is alive the landed rights are vested in him. ”

“ Thus, my great-grandfather in the fourth collateral line is my grandfather; his son is my grandfather also; the son of the latter is my father; his son is my brother, elder or younger; and his son and grandson are my son and grandson.
It will be observed that the several collateral lines are brought into and merged in the lineal line, ascending as well as descending; so that the ancestors and descendants of my collateral brothers and sisters become mine as well as theirs. This is one of the characteristics of the classificatory system. None of the kindred are lost. ”

“ In reckoning the relationships between the collateral members of the family, one counts not generations or begettings, not removes or degrees, but ancestry or the number of ancestors, so that the father or founder of [422] the family only counts once. Thus his descendants Ad and Bd in the sixth generation or lifetime, are fourth cousins separated from one another by nine ancestors: that is, they are related in the ninth âch. ”

“ A person who had no children or direct lineal descendants might bequeath his property at pleasure: if he died without a will, first his father, then his brother or brother's children, next his sister or sister's children succeeded: if none such existed, then the cousins by the father's side, next the cousins by the mother's side,—the male line of descent having preference over the female. ”

“ He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; ”

“ They are, evidently, quite a creditable and promising line of descendants, especially one lad of twenty years who seems to have inherited the best brain of the family for generations back. His grandfather says the world will hear from him some day, and I don’t know why it shouldn’t. They are very happy, these old people. ”

“ May my descendants attend to my wishes, as to the division and employment of this immense sum!
"'In a century and a half, there happen so many changes, so many varieties of fortunes, such a rise and fall in the condition of the successive generations of a family, that probably, a hundred and fifty years hence, my descendants will belong to various classes of society, and thus represent the divers social elements of their time.
"'There may, perhaps, be among them men of great intelligence great courage, or great virtue—learned men, or names illustrious in arts and arms. ”

“ Our ancestors—some of whom, my son, as I have often told you, lived the bosom friends of conjurors and soothsayers—were, as many of their descendants are at the present day, to be met with amongst fortune-tellers and gypsies—our [Pg 20] ancestors had the gift of following a dream in all its zig-zag mistiness. And the wisdom of our ancestors”—and here the flea raised itself upon its legs, and looked with a serene pride about it—“the wisdom of our ancestors has come down in its fullness upon myself; to be left, my dear child, whole and unimpaired, and I may add, unimproved to you.” ”

“ An amiable variation is the family tree. Usually one couple are appointed the original ancestors, if possible, a couple associated with an honorific event like the Norman Conquest. That couple have no ancestors. They are not descendants. ”

“ But here arises the question, What interest can we, the descendants of the practical brother, heirs to so much historical renown, possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless, and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? ”

“ You are speaking of parents who have long since left their native land. The ancestor need not be indignant with his descendants when they use the language of their new home, so long as they continue to act in accordance with his spirit. ”

“ Every household has its particular gods and protectors—the ancestors thus sublimated, and the master of the family, the prospective god. The condition beyond the grave in no way depends on conduct during life, it is determined by the descendants. ”

“ Although we find the brilliant branch of the family very largely represented in the pedigree as more remote ancestors, there was no such selection as would require heredity to place genius on the heads of any of the direct descendants. ”

“ If there be no children, nor their descendants, father, mother, brothers or sisters, nor their descendants, then to the grandfather, grandmother, uncles and aunts and their descendants, in equal parts, and so on in other cases, without end, passing to the nearest lineal ancestor, and their children and their descendants, in equal parts. ”

“ Theoretically, all members of a clan, high and low alike, were held to be the descendants of a common ancestor, and in this way to have a real and direct claim upon [pg 030] one another. If a man was not in some degree akin to another he was no better than a beast, and might be killed like one without compunction whenever occasion arose. ”

“ The children of sons take the portions of sons, and the children of daughters take the portions of daughters, however low in descent.
8. The second degree comprises the grandfather, and grandmother, and other ancestors, and brothers, and sisters, and their descendants, however low in descent, the nearer of whom exclude the more distant. The great-grandfather cannot inherit together with a grandfather or a grandmother; and the son of a brother cannot inherit with a brother or a sister, and the grandson of a brother cannot inherit with the son of a brother, or with the son of a sister. ”

“ Like the Patriarchs of old I am surrounded by all my descendants, sons, daughters and grandchildren—they have assembled from all quarters to visit us, and if I were not afraid that they would soon become too numerous for the limits of our house I should insist on its being an annual custom. ”

“ But that over, the relapse into stolid indifference is as complete as before. Good or bad, the gentle, trusting, superstitious, timid, easily yielding nature of the ancestors is continued in the descendants. They could be led to noble ends: they have been driven to base uses. ”

“ As no law of primogeniture can ever entail the distinctions meritoriously won, or the wealth painfully amassed, by a single individual, upon a line of descendants, the mutations in the condition of families will be perpetual. ”

“ Their descendants, doubling every twenty five years, would, after sixty or seventy generations had accumulated, have covered the whole earth so thickly that they would be packed in one immovable mass, the whole planet carpeted with their forms and paved with their upturned faces. ”

“ Our two per cent, of sinistral children seem for the greater part to be the descendants, by the laws of heredity, of ancestors who in childhood and youth have been compelled to become sinistral by the causes enumerated. ”

“ Their descendants have long ago been blended into the common life of the people of America, scarcely conscious of the fact that they might have the same pride in ancestry which the descendants of the Pilgrims delight to exhibit. ”

“ In the absence of descendants, parents share equally as heirs; if one of the latter is deceased, the survivor takes the whole. Descendants of a deceased heir, who are within the fifth degree of consanguinity, share equally the part which would have fallen to their ancestors. ”