Hillora Lang,
Burgaw, NC.
As a person with Asperger Syndrome I have always felt estranged from the human race. In high school I began working on my family tree, and it really helped to ground me and allow me to feel a connection to past generations. When doing genealogy research last year I discovered a great website called Geni.com, which is building a world family tree. I began searching for random historical figures to see if I was related. As time went on, I began entering the names of people I heard news stories about each day on NPR; beyond the Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English, French, Italian, Nordic, and Spanish relations which I’ve discovered, I found connections not only to Caucasian ancestors, but also to African-Americans such as poet Langston Hughes, President Obama and Michele Obama, and am hoping to find many more ancestors of all races. I have always been proud of my family’s diversity; my adopted cousin is of mixed race and her husband was African-American, I have other family members who are Native American, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, and Taiwanese, and look forward to enlarging my family tree with each succeeding generation. It seems that I am related to just about everyone so I gladly claim, “Yes, you are all my family!”
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