This book tells the saga of one family, the Hammills, through several generations. Matthews starts her story in Scotland, moves to Ireland, and then brings her ancestors into the American colonies, before the Revolution. The title refers to the fact that the people she writes about were neither very rich and at the top of society, nor very poor and on the bottom rung. They may have periodically had some rough times, but they also seemed to do their best to make sure their children were educated, and tried to leave them something, either money or property, to help them with their lives.
The subtitle is “Three Seas, Three Centuries, One Scots-Irish Family”. They cross the Irish Sea and the Atlantic, and end up on the shores of the Pacific. She tracks the immigrant Hammill in the 1700’s, through his descendants during the Civil War, and to the beginning of the twentieth century. She not only looks at her direct line, but associated cousins, and even neighbors and others living in the same places and same eras. She also writes about the general history, and how that would have impacted her family. For instance, some of the battles of the Civil War may have been fought close enough to the family home for them to have heard the cannons.
She was able to find court records where an ancestor’s testimony was recorded, and the journals of a friend that specifically mentions her ancestor. In addition to doing a deep dive into basic historical sources, Matthews also did something that most historians and genealogists do not. She created several documents that she felt could have been written by her ancestors or others who knew them. While she did use the information she could document to create these, she freely admits they are her own creation. While this is not something that I would feel comfortable doing, her book, her ancestors, her decision.
If this was your family, how would you research them? While this is not exactly the way a genealogist would present their research to a client, Matthews has definitely left no stone unturned in researching her ancestors. I really appreciated the way she wrote about a time period or location, and then put her family into it. If you were trying to write a history of your family, this would be a good example to follow.