Good news! My mom has sent me pictures of a (partial) family tree that shows how my grandmother, and therefore I, link back to Stephen Hopkins. I will be revealing these pictures during my end-of-the-semester presentation.
Seeing this family tree was really interesting, as it includes my ancestors' birth places, birth dates, death dates, death locations, and dates of marriage. (However, this information is a little sparser for my more distant relatives, like Stephen Hopkins and his children.) Having so much information made me feel like I knew so much more about my family and my ancestors!
One thing I found really fascinating about this family tree was that it revealed that I am descended from one of Stephen Hopkins's daughters from his first marriage, so this daughter was born in England. It seemed special, since he only had three children with his first wife. This also means that I had two relatives travel to America on the Mayflower - both Stephen Hopkins and his daughter!
To answer some of Thylias's questions (from her comment on an earlier blog post):
I would love to take some of the information I'm learning about my family and make it into a book other than my blog - perhaps a scrapbook or "family tree" album of some kind. I want to share everything I'm learning with my other relatives, both present and future. I would love to have something to show my future children, if I have them, that details who they are related to and what those relatives were like. I've actually already started sharing the things I've learned about Stephen Hopkins with other members of my family. For instance, both my brother and one of my cousins is partially named after Stephen Hopkins, so I've shared many of my findings with them (through email and Facebook). My entire family is really curious and glad that I am doing this research! Of course, traditional oral story-telling is also a form of "book," so I will be making that form of book when I verbally tell my family and possibly my future children all that I now know about my distant relatives.
As for how this will guide my life, I'm not sure yet! It makes me feel amazing to know that I have such an accomplished (and kind of famous!) relative! I'm also very happy to be able to share the information I've learned with my family members, present and future. Of course, doing this research has made me think more deeply about my own legacy that I will one day leave behind (see my previous blog post!). However, as this project is a work in progress, I'm not quite sure what the end result will be, and how that end result will affect my life and my outlook.
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