I'm an Amish Blogger

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:51:25 -0600

My family on my mother's mother's side is Amish. You know, electricity-shunning, indoor-plumbing ignorning, deoderant-discarding Amish. As you may have noticed, I am not Amish. For one thing, I have electricity. Electricity is necessary to run computers, and I run one. Running a computer is necessary for accessing the Internet, and I have access to the Internet, which in turn gives me access to Vox, which allows me to blog. Therefore, I'm a pretty poor Amish guy. Plus, since I'm part Cherokee on my father's side, I can't grow a beard, which makes me a really poor Amish guy.

But Amish by heritage, I am. When my Mom came and visited last fall, she brought me a copy of the Keim family geneology. It was put together by a relative of mine still in the Amish community.

My last name is Branson, which is my adoptive father's last name. My mother's maiden name is Weimer. My grandmother's maiden name is Keim.

And so begins a reading of the Keim family of my history.

"Keim" means kernal or sprout in German. It goes back to 1020 AD, and the first of the Keims was Gottschalk Keim, who dwelled in a castle vested to him by King Conrad II, of the Holy Roman Empire, which was, incidentally, neither Holy nor Roman. He owned a castle named Gerolsek, which apparently is too obscure even for Wikipedia.

So that's it. I am descended from royalty. Or at least, descended from the class of people that was favored by royalty. It's fascinating, and I will be posting more on my family tree later.

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I'm an Amish Blogger