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December 17, 2015

Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #3 on my Guest List

Today I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. 

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

I am going to invite my French-Mohawk ancestor Ots-Toch as my third guest. That should be an interesting dinner guest! Ots-Toch was born ca 1640 in what is now New York, and she married the Dutchman Cornelis Van Slyke. I want to talk to her about the new colony, and about her life in the Mohawk village. Naturally I'm going to ask who the heck her mother was! Her father was Jacques Hertel, interpreter to Samuel de Champlain but there is no record of her mother's name, only that she was a respected Mohawk woman. 

Boy do I have a ton of questions for Ots-Toch! It's difficult to think of a gift she might like but I have a very nice necklace of a turtle carved out of white bone, held by a piece of rawhide. The rumour is that she was from the Turtle Clan so I would like her to have it.

 

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