Why this line matters—and why their story opens the next realm

Before Ireland becomes a setting in Bone and Blood, before myth and memory begin to intertwine, there is a quieter question that deserves to be asked plainly:

Who are the Cains—and who are they to me?

They are not an abstract lineage.
They are not a symbolic device.
They are my people.

My grandmother, Helen Margaret Cain, was born on July 21, 1903, in Susanville, California. She came from good, old-fashioned pioneer stock—families who carried their lives west not as an idea, but in wagons, journals, and memory.

Her father’s people were the Cains.

The Cain line came to the United States from Ireland in the early 1700s, descending from an ancestor born in Dublin in 1735. Like so many families of that era, they moved gradually—east to Midwest, then west—until movement itself became part of the family’s character.

The Wagon Train That Changed Everything

In 1859, the Cain story quite literally turned westward.

Helen’s grandfather, William Milton Cain, and his wife Margaret Mitchell, served as wagon masters for a combined party: twelve Cains, seven Owens, and seven McCabes—twenty-six people in total.

On May 10, 1859, the Cain-Owens-McCabe wagon train departed Missouri. The party followed the Humboldt River through Nevada to the Sink, then crossed the desert to Truckee.

At the California line, the party divided.

One branch—Helen’s grandfather’s—went north to Susanville.
The other, led by her great-grandparents George Cathey Cain and Abigail Martha Cole, crossed to the Sacramento River, following it through Sacramento, then Stockton, and finally to Santa Clara.

There, the senior Cains rented a farm at Milliken Corner for a year before returning to San Joaquin County, where they purchased 160 acres three and one-half miles from Woodbridge.

This is not legend.
This is documented history.

And it is the backbone of the Cain line that runs directly to me.

The Last Cain—and the Scribes Who Followed

My grandmother was the last Cain in her direct line.

She had three sons—my father Fred, and twins Rollin and Rod. In that generation, Rod became the family scribe. He preserved what had been handed down and expanded it with his own careful research, asking new questions without discarding what was already known.

Now, that responsibility rests with me.

I am the current family historian. And I have chosen not only to preserve what is known to be true—but also to explore what might have been true, honoring the distinction between record and imagination without silencing either.

Some of the family materials are so fragile they cannot be removed from storage. Paper that will crumble when exposed to air. Ink that has survived centuries by being left undisturbed.

That alone tells you how seriously this lineage has been taken.

From Recorded History to Ancient Memory

We know that our Irish ancestor—born in Dublin in 1735—came to America and fought in the American Revolutionary War. That much is documented.

But research has a way of widening the lens.

In tracing the Cain name back through Ireland, I encountered the ancient Cain / O’Kane / Ó Catháin clans—and then, unexpectedly, the Coyne (Ó Cadhain)line, which brings the story full circle through my daughter.

What began as genealogy became something older.

I found myself asking questions that reach beyond family trees:

When did Ireland become an island?
Who lived there before written history?
Where did those people come from?
And how far back does shared human memory actually go?

Eventually, that trail led me—not forward, but backward—into ancient texts: the story of the Tower of Babel, later Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream interpreted by Daniel.

The image of the statue—its feet and toes made of iron and clay—has long been understood to represent the fragmented tribes of Western Europe. From there, it was surprisingly easy to trace Anglo-Saxon roots and see how Gothic tribes intermingled with the early peoples who would become Irish.

And once I had gone that far, I asked the inevitable question:

Why not go back to the beginning?

Why This Matters—to All of Us

This is where the saga turns.

Before wars, before kingdoms, before borders, there was a story of harmony—followed by dissension. That fracture, once introduced, echoes through time as conflict, power-seeking, dissatisfaction, and division.

Understanding where that fracture began—and how it repeats—is not just a personal inquiry.

It is a human one.

The Cain story matters because it is both specific and universal. It honors the scribes of each generation who preserved memory with care. It acknowledges the difference between what is recorded and what is remembered. And it dares to imagine continuity across centuries without claiming certainty.

Setting the Stage for Arc Two

This is why Ireland becomes the next environment.

Not as a backdrop—but as a return.

The First Realm established the mythic foundation.
Arc Two steps into ancestral soil where documented history and ancient memory overlap.

Genealogy is not a detour in Bone and Blood.
It is the bridge.

The Cains are the thread that makes that crossing possible.

And their story—carefully recorded, reverently preserved, and courageously expanded—deserves to be told.

Into the Weeds with Dúchas Quinn
Author’s Notes on ancestry, lineage, and the stories beneath the surface