Why Your Great, Great, Great Grandfather Matters
Listen to your ancestors before it's too late.
Edward Hinman, 400 Years Ago
In 1650, a 23-year-old loyal subject of the recently executed King Charles I arrived on the shores of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Just three decades after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, this beleaguered man-on-the-run stepped off a wooden merchant ship and onto the soil of a New England.
His name was Edward Hinman and he was my 10th great grandfather. His arrival came twenty-five years before King Phillip’s War against the Algonquin tribes, eighty-one years before George Washington took his first breath, and more than a hundred years before the American Revolution.
Edward entered British North America at the very beginning. He was among the second generation of Englishmen to step into this land of deep forests, bitter winters, warring tribes, and endless wild game. By 1650, the total population of European migrants on the continent numbered about fifty thousand. The biggest city was Boston at just two thousand, and Philadelphia wouldn’t even exist for another thirty years. Raw, beautiful, and dangerous, this was no country for old men.
Born around 1627, Edward likely grew up in Rutland, halfway between London and York. He eventually told his New England neighbors that prior to fleeing England, he had served as King Charles I’s Sergeant at Arms. This meant he performed ceremonial bodyguard duties while also serving as the king’s chief law enforcement officer—arresting heretics, punishing dissidents, and discharging other seventeenth century "police" actions.
In his early twenties, Edward would have also protected Charles during a bloody civil war that ended with his protectee beheaded and the sinister, diabolical, and worst of all, puritanical protestant, Oliver Cromwell, as the eventual Lord and Protector of England.
Yet there’s zero evidence that Edward did any of this bodyguard business. There is evidence, however, that when he asked people in New England to call him “Sergeant Edward,” they did.
Whether he was lying, exaggerating, or telling the truth about his life back in Europe, one thing is for sure: Edward had entered a new land with new opportunities.
Opportunity
Edward’s story as the king’s Sergeant at Arms likely created prospects for him. Because if it didn’t, he would’ve kept his mouth shut about his fealty to a king that the current Commonwealth of England (3,000 miles away) considered a tyrant.
According to Boston public records, Edward boarded the 180-ton merchant ship, “William and George,” as a crewman for the ten-week voyage across the stormy, swelling, and dark North Atlantic. Arriving unscathed in Boston, he soon made his way to Connecticut, likely by ship as intercolonial dirt roads, like “The King’s Highway,” didn’t exist yet.
Not that long after stepping onto a dock in Stratford, Connecticut, Edward likely leveraged his “Sergeant” title to convince a prominent local farmer and mill owner named Francis Stiles to give his daughter Hannah’s hand in marriage. After bequeathing his daughter, Mr. Stiles presumably helped Edward receive a generous land grant in and around Stratford.
“At a town-meeting in Stratford, held March 7, 1654,” the record states, “it was voted that Edward Hinman should have for his use that parcel of meadow which lyeth west of Mr. Stile's house, on this side of the further Milne river, for his own use, so long as he stays or will make improvements…”
Edward farmed and eventually built a mill on this plot, all while Hannah gave birth to four sons and four daughters who made it to adulthood. In the decades that followed, Edward did well enough to buy more land and build the first tide mill between Stratford and what is now Bridgeport, Connecticut.
With the Hinman family established, Edward's offspring eventually married, had kids, and earned a living, with one generation succeeding the next. And so the Hinman line marched on... through a revolution, a civil war, and two world wars… from sail ships, wagons, and letters to steam engines, trains, and phones. Villages became cities, frontiers became farms, and farms became suburbs. Four centuries passed by and so too did each generation of Hinmans.
So here I am today... wondering how the generations that preceded me—and ultimately produced me—affect who I've become? And how does your ancestral line affect who you've become?
So come along with me, my barbarian friend. Let’s try and answer that question. Let's take a trip into the mists of history and discover, as I did, that when it comes to our ancestral lines, I don't think the apples fall that far from the tree.
Let’s explore why your great, great, great grandfather matters.
Warriors, Doctors, and Patriots (and absolutely no scoundrels)
After combing through records of my paternal side over the last four centuries, the Hinman men seem to have had one of four occupations: farmer, miller, doctor, warrior.
Several of Sergeant Edward’s sons, grandsons, and great grandsons served as officers in colonial militias, including several grandsons who attempted to relieve a besieged Fort William Henry of “Last of the Mohicans” fame. (The fort surrendered to the French before the ass-kicking Hinmans arrived, while hostile Indians subsequently massacred (as documented in the movie) many of the fort’s soldiers. These were violent times, for sure.
A generation later, “an ardent patriot,” according to one source, named Colonel Benjamin Hinman (raised by my 8th great granddad) fought battles and skirmishes in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
Just after the Battles at Lexington and Concord which sparked our revolution, General Washington wrote Colonel Hinman a dispatch, ordering him to reinforce Fort Ticonderoga with his regiment just after Ethan Allen and his legendary Green Mountain Boys seized it from the redcoats.
When Hinman arrived, Allen relinquished command, but one obstinate officer refused. His name was Benedict Arnold. Ultimately, Hinman wrote the Massachusetts legislature who sent a delegation to relieve Arnold, who then resigned and left the fort in a huff. Fucking traitor.
In the early 1850s, and for reasons unknown (probably the gold rush), my 3rd-great grandpa, Dr. Marquis DeSalvo “Marcus” Hinman, (son of Wolcott who fought in the War of 1812) moved his family in a covered wagon from upstate New York to El Dorado, California near Sacramento. On the journey, Marcus brought along Wolcott’s metal powder horn, which he likely used in the War of 1812. It now hangs in my home library.
From the 1850s until now, most of Marcus’ decedents stayed in California. His grandson, Harry, went onto graduate Stanford in 1902 and served as a dentist in San Francisco. His son, Harry Jr., graduated from Stanford in 1938 and became a doctor in Redding. And his son, Harry III, went to Vietnam and retired as a Navy Captain. And finally, Harry III’s son (me), followed in his old man’s footsteps as a warrior and his 10th great-grandpa’ as a bodyguard—protecting American billionaires instead of English kings.
Looking back on four hundred years of family history, I can see how the Hinman apples rarely fell far from the tree.
By retracing my paternal ancestry—my maternal “Doyle” ancestors, according to my mom, “were Irish horse thieves”—I’m left asking this question about all those Hinman apples. When we remove obvious material benefits like money or nepotism, how does our genealogy shape who we are?
Do Bloodlines Matter?
Yes, they matter. Above all because the Hinmans I researched ultimately produced something I consider of great importance: me. And the same goes for your ancestors producing you. But that’s not all…
Just as an astronomer explores the causes of our existence (the universe), I’m exploring the causes of my own existence.
Though I’m lucky enough to see more of my documented history than most, four hundred years remains a tiny glimpse into my long cosmic genealogy. But even a flickering light offers some illumination.
By researching those who came before, each of us can inch a bit closer to discovering why we are the way we are.
Genetic Memory
Who you are is rooted in your genetic memory, and that memory is passed onto to you by your genetic line.
In Chapter 6 of my book, The Barbarian in You, I write this:
Recent studies, especially those of cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, suggest we are not born a blank slate. Instead, we are born with a slate already stamped by a unique and complex amalgamation of our ancestors’ genes, traits, desires, and behaviors—what American Indian activist John Trudell calls, your “genetic memory.”
From your genetic memory comes intuitive messages about who you are and what you are born to do. Think back to your childhood and adolescence. What subjects and activities did you truly love? What did you simply feel drawn to do? Chances are you may not know why you were drawn to these things, just that you were. Author of several best-selling books on human nature, Robert Greene calls these feelings your “primal inclinations.”
These inclinations, he says, are “stamped upon us by nature” and become “our anchor.” An anchor that provides the direction we need to realize our calling in life. I call this [anchor] our “barbarian compass”—a guiding light born from genetic memory, received through intuition, and steering us toward our destiny.
Through Pinker’s scientific research and Greene’s intuitive inclinations, our interests and personalities seem to be buried deep into our psyches the day we are born. In short, we are born with our ancestors’ genetic residue.
Like one of Sergeant Edward’s mills bringing new scoops of water, we come from the same source, yet every scoop of water is a bit different—each with its own debris. If the estuary being scooped is the cosmic soup of humanity, perhaps the mill is our family lineage, and each scoop of the mill is a person in that lineage.
For many of us, our time around the mill is more than half-way gone. And soon, back into the cosmic soup we’ll go.
Yet during our time around the mill, we can explore some of the scoops that came before us.
As I’ve researched my Hinman family line, I’ve looked back to Puritanical England, Revolutionary America, and Westward Pioneers. I’ve met up with farmers, millers, doctors, and warriors. And many of them risked life and limb to make life better for themselves and their offspring… all which benefited me.
In this journey through the past, I’m reminded of two things. First, like Sergeant Edward from 1627 to 1681, we’re all on borrowed time. Second, I see similarities in personality and occupation with those who’ve gone before me. But I’ve also noticed some differences.
Through my own drawn-to pursuits—like twenty years of writing and thirty-five years of weightlifting—I’ve become who I am, producing my character and all the behaviors that come with it. And the same goes for you.
If you have kids, you can add your unique character into your family's cosmic soup, affecting future scoops of your family mill—influencing and whispering into the genetic memories of your great, great, great grandchildren.
As for me, I won’t be adding to the Hinman cosmic soup through reproduction, and that’s okay. Because just as you’ve trusted the barbarian in you to live life on your terms—and perhaps have children—I've done the same, just without them.
That said, both of us can look back and feel gratitude for what our ancestors have bestowed upon us—their collective intuitive voice born eons ago and continuously shaped by subsequent generations. Through this intuitive voice—the barbarian in you—our ancestors guide us towards our true purpose, i.e. doing what each of us is drawn to do.
Final Thoughts
We spend a third of our lives asleep. Great swaths of the other two-thirds are spent meeting deadlines, attending meetings, doing chores, running errands, scrolling Instagram, and fucking around. All this is fine and even healthy in certain ways. But what about the time spent doing what we are born to do, the times spent feeling vigor, wonder, and fellowship? The time spent following our intuitive barbarian compass?
From our genetic memory comes a roadmap for our lives. We are genetically positioned and intuitively nudged by our ancestral past. We are intuitively pulled ahead by the pursuits and people we resonate with in this life.
The push from your past and the pull from your present moves you forward towards your own self-actualization.
Departing from your home base—your genetic memory—you’re on the journey of your life. Showing you the way is the barbarian in you, intuitively guiding you to wherever you’re meant to go.
As for me… when the weights, the books, and the people I love call me forward (pulling me) toward a life of vigor, wonder, and fellowship, I listen and I go.
Whoever and whatever is calling upon you, I hope you go too.
By doing it, we can make our ancestors as proud of us as we are of them.
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