Descendants

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ⁠The character of the reputed ancestors of some men, has made it possible for their descendants to be vicious in the extreme, without being degenerate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some of these sustain the character of their ancestors in an eminent degree; others again are everything but what their parents were.
One feature of the country is different from that of almost any other portion of the United States. The descendants of the first pioneers are all there. There has been no emigration from the country. The consequence is that intermarriages have made nearly all the descendants of the pioneers relatives. In very many instances these marriages have united families whose ancient feuds are traditions of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In certain ceremonies the ancestral a-ni′-to, are urged to care for living descendants, to protect them from a-ni′-to that seek to harm—and children are named after their dead ancestors, so they may be known and receive protection. ”

“ The quantities in that problem were the ancestral--the maternal--roots of those two rival and hostile families whose descendants--some brave, others fair--we find unwittingly thrown together at the ball, and with whom we are shortly to have the honor of an unmasked acquaintance. ”

“ The father and all the male paternal ancestors of the purchaser and their descendants shall be admitted before any of the female paternal ancestors or their heirs; all the female paternal ancestors and their heirs before the mother or any of the maternal ancestors or her or their descendants ”

“ 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. ”

“ The results of our inquiry have led to the unexpected result that the American-born descendants of these types differ from their parents; and that these differences develop in early childhood, and persist throughout life. It is furthermore remarkable that each type changes in a peculiar way. ”

“ They are fond of established customs; they are fond of long-established names; and that love of order and quiet which characterizes the nation, gives a vast influence to the descendants of the old families, whose forefathers have been lords of the soil from time immemorial. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am possessed of many abilities and arts, which fit me to serve spiritual beings. Your great descendant, on the other hand, has not so many abilities and arts as I, and is not so capable of serving spiritual beings. And moreover he was appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid all over the kingdom, so that he might establish your descendants in this lower earth. The people of the four quarters all stand in reverent awe of him. ”

“ As his years increased, my father did not care to venture much beyond the circle of his own family, though as thirteen of his children had grown up, and he had seven married daughters, the two elder of whom had each thirteen children of her own, the number of his immediate descendants afforded him a fairly wide field of selection. ”

“ Before her death she had seventy-one grandchildren added to the list of her descendants, besides fifty-seven great-grandchildren, and one of the fourth generation, making in all one hundred and forty-two descendants. ”

“ There are certain predominating characteristics in families which, in some cases, will remain in their descendants from generation to generation for a great length of time, and some of those of the first pioneers have thus continued in some degree in their line of descent up to the present time ”

“ Of these eleven are healthy, fourteen are not described, fourteen are defective and seventeen are dead. The total number of living descendants, representing no less than the third generation of seven families, is but thirty-nine. ”

“ Everywhere we find the tribes or clans composed of several families, the42 members of each family being more closely connected with one another than with the rest of the tribe. The family, consisting of parents, children, and often also their next descendants, is a universal institution among existing peoples.204 And it seems extremely probable that, among our earliest human ancestors, the family formed, if not the society itself, at least the nucleus of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The beginning of society, it has been said a thousand times, is the family, a natural association of kindred by blood, composed of father, mother and their descendants. In this family, the father is absolute master of his wife, his children and the goods of the little community; at his death his eldest son succeeds him; and in course of time this association of kindred, by natural increase and by adoption, develops into the clan, gens, or γένος. ”

“ 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. ”