FAMILY MATTERS

Much of this data comes from the internet and from connections myself and others have drawn from posted or otherwise

published family genealogies. The information is probably full of errors – but we probably won’t know where they are in the course of our lifetimes.

Where there is considerable dispute, I note this, and in some cases go into detail when the about it because I think it represents similar problems faced by other genealogists, and I hope they will be interested in it. In some cases the dates of birth of the same person differs from one source to another. The place of birth may also differ. This is so common, I hardly note them, except in cases for which another person entirely might be meant. Curiously, death dates and places are generally more consistent.

I have tried to enhance the presentation of individual lives with supplemental materials which seem to me instructive. One ancestor was scalped; another arrested for desertion; still another was “base born” (which usually means illegitimate). I find all such comments fascinating, though not necessarily definitive.

Some readers will wonder why I have spent forty years investigating these families and the last four years trying to write about them – especially when so much is so readily available now on the internet.

There are three reasons. First, who knew 40 years ago that there would ever be an internet? Second, there is no other person who is as interested as I am in my daughters’ exact lineage. Third, I have been mindful throughout this process that I am not only joining the pieces of a family puzzle; I am resurrecting the lives of people who came and went before me, and these people were as real to their own parents, spouses, and children as anyone in our own familes are to us.

Finally, genealogy is famously the passion of the soon to be eulogized, and so I do not expect the younger generation to be as interested in the family tree as I am. The time will come, however, when the hands of the clock sweep more slowly, and if the questions are asked: “Who were Mom’s people? Who were Dad’s?” someone will pull this book down from a dusty shelf, and Our Families

open it.