Post One

Introduction
To begin and be quite clear I have tried to be as scrupulous as possible in assembling these stories and histories but in some cases I have had to rely on logic and “within reason” for some familial connections. It is by no means meant to be a genealogical bible but more a story of where we came from, what was happening around our ancestors and what their role was. This chapter is arranged in a manner that attempts to illustrate the arrival of my paternal ancestors in this country in the chronological order they arrived merged into the history of the geographic area in which they settled. 
My earliest McDonald ancestors arrived, not with the pilgrims but a few years later with the Massachusetts Bay Company. As unlikely as it may sound they ultimately ended up in West Virginia, as did our ancestors who came in through Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia but I am getting ahead of myself. My goal is providing some understanding of how and why they arrived and moved. I always had considerable information about my mother’s ancestors but only knew that my father’s family was from West Virginia and as far as I knew they were poor coal miners. As a means of explanation, I grew up in the city that had been the Silicon Valley of the early 1900s. The automobile was the most modern technology of the period and the rubber industry that supplied the tires for those autos was integral to that industry. Akron Ohio was the hub of the rubber industry. Unlike the rust belt city it became during the 1960’s, Akron had professional sports teams, culture, parks and a population that was growing in leaps and bounds. This industry required both skilled and unskilled labor and people poured in, mostly from the south. Early on the “old-timers” welcomed these emigrants with the strange accents until the financial pressures of the great depression caused them to be poorer and they became a drain. It was in this environment that my father spent his formative years and despite athletic prowess, professional accolades and college degrees he never got over feeling that he was inferior. Imagine my surprise to find that not only was he descended from early colonists, revolutionary soldiers, large landowners but quite possibly British royalty. As this effort is aimed only at American ancestors and I am describing their European roots only as they provide their reasons for emigrating I will stop here and talk briefly about one Brit. Colonel Robert Bolling, my 9th great grandfather going back through the Lake/Poole ancestral line was a descendant of the Boleyn family of fame during the reign of Henry VIII. Even though Anne Boleyn did not provide an heir, her sister Mary is said to have had a torrid affair with the king and bore one or two children believed to have been his offspring. Her son, Henry, our 13th great grandfather, was one of these children. Consequently, we are quite probably descended from Henry. The other possibility is that Mary’s husband Thomas Carie was Henry’s father; Thomas was descended from Edward I and Richard the Lion Heart. Either way my father had nothing to be ashamed of. Now, I’ll stop my digression and in future posts get to the task at hand, my paternal ancestors and their colonization of this country which is probably much more important than some sleazy king.