I have been intending to post these past couple of weeks. With this evening being one of those rare ones that are short of distractions I have an opportunity to catch up, so lets get going.
The first part is Where Things Are Now. That is, where they are in my life. I am in week number four of the new job and my first thought to pass along that it's nice to be doing real work again. When I was in the Navy TechRep office, opportunities to make technical decisions were rare. I can only recall making one, and I can't remember what it was now. In that role we were facilitator between a defense contractor and a Navy Program office for a variety of projects. It was paperwork, attending meetings, and sitting around doing a lot of nothing. I hated that, and I kept asking for more things to do. That got me noticed for performance review time, as that I got an "Outstanding" rating and the maximum raise package.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way as far as workload goes. I'm pretty swamped. My first two weeks were training, and I'm still in training in the OJT sense. I've never been a Production Test Engineer before. I have some understanding of factory flow, but I haven't worked in a manufacturing capacity since 1985. I've been development, I've helped transition projects to get ready for production, and I've done some field testing of equipment. So what this is, is a new animal for me, and it is definitely stretching my envelope. I regard that as a good thing. As busy as it is on the factory floor, I am not working overtime, and none is expected. There are test techs working around the clock, and if something goes wrong then the team that I'm on takes care of it when we come in the following morning. And I've already written up two evaluations on the electronic subsystems we are testing, which gives me that sense of accomplishment that I want to take home with me. It's so far a lot of fun, and I see myself riding this train for some time.
With that, we now get into the other subject I want to talk about.
During my 2 1/2 week hiatus, I decided to do some digging on my ancestry. Now it's been known since I was in high school that I am descended from some colonials. Most of my ancestors came over in the 1840s from their home country of Germany, some came over from Ireland around the same time, but my paternal grandmother had some Scotch-Irish ancestry and one of my uncles did some digging into this. He found that we were descended from a William Riley Parker, who was born in Surry County North Carolina, and moved to Indiana and later on Doniphan County, Kansas. Later in life he became interested in politics, and was elected to the lower house of the Kansas Legislature where he served one term, failing to win reelection.
We know that his father was John Parker, who had a good chunk of land in Surry County, and in my digging I found that his brothers farmed across the state line in Virginia. William Riley Parker's father-in-law was Edmond (Edmund?) Hodges. There appears to be evidence that John Parker and Edmund Hodges served in the Revolutionary War, but I can't prove it. There was also a John Parker in Surry County who was a moonshiner, but we don't know if there was a second John Parker there at the samet time and the same county. Census records so far indicate only one. So I'm going to claim descent from a moonshiner and proudly so. OK?
Well my recent research went in another direction. My grandmother also descended from a Levi Pilkington, and she was a granddaughter of Letitia Pilkington Penny. Family legend has it that Levi Pilkington was run out of the Quakers for swearing and engaging in military activities, and yes I'm going to take some pride in that one. I decided to see what I could learn about Levi Pilkington. And here is where it gets interesting.
Levi's grandfather was also named Levi Pilkington, and one website has him as a Revolutionary War veteran. He was born in southeastern Pennsylvania. I took the Pilkington line back to 1687, and then took his mother's line back some. This continued on to John Dudley, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, who was a trusted advisor of no less than Henry VIII! John Dudley, who was also the 1st Earl of Warwick, has a Wikipedia article, as that he was executed for high treason at the Tower of London for trying to get his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on to the throne.
The line goes back even farther, as that I have learned that I share a common ancestor with George Washington. And that's the good news. The bad news is that King Charles III is also descended from this same ancestor.
Another trace that I need to work on (verify) is one that goes all the way back to Charlemagne. There is also evidence of Spanish and French royalty, and who knows where it will go from there when I pick this up again.
Meantime, this has inspired me to learn about British history. How do Dukes become Dukes? How does an Earl become an Earl? I've learned that the reigning monarch made those decisions back then, as a means of recognizing and rewarding talent that they valued in those times.
I am now reading a book on Henry VIII, and already John Dudley is being mentioned on page 7. I may have to search Amazon to see if anyone has written a book about him. I get the sense that my ancestor is not well liked as a historical figure, in spite of some significant military accomplishments that he led.
All of that said.........I've got a lot of work to do, not only at work, but also in family history.
