When I was younger, I was plagued by consistent nightmares every single night. This isn’t uncommon for young kids, but it was no less unpleasant. One night, after a particularly bad dream, my father came up with a solution. He brought me to a shelf in our living room, and pointed out an odd shaped stone. It was pointed on one side (it was dull by this point, but there was clearly one at some point in time), smooth on the other, and had a strange indent down the middle on both sides. He handed it to me and told me it was the “dream rock”, a magical rock that would stop my bad dreams, and although he totally made that up, what was important about the rock was where it came from. A long time ago, probably the late 1700s or early 1800s, an ancestor sharpened this rock to chop down trees when they first moved from either Spain or Ireland, to America, down around what’s now Tennessee. They didn’t have many resources or money coming to the U.S., like most others at the time, so in order to survive, they had to make their own tools, like the “dream rock” which, once attached to a small branch, would serve as an axe. Using this axe, my ancestors built their home, more tools, and eventually the farm that allowed them to make money in their new country. 

– Samuel D Dore

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more