Yikes!

I went to bed, drifted off to sleep, and woke with a start an hour later realizing I hadn't posted. Oh, no!

Luckily there's still time.

My aunt (one of the many on my father's side) sent out to anyone whose server wouldn't choke on the file a copy of the family tree traced back to 1783. It's a book originally put together by my Dad's uncle Wilbur. I saw his version of this back in the mid-1980s. My aunt has since caught the family historian bug and has been working to fill in gaps and take it back even farther. She turned her updated version into a PDF file. Some of us with slower connections are going to get sent a CD-ROM with the book on it.

Most interesting story so far: One of my forbears (first name Thomas, middle name Jefferson--called T.J. for short) was shot five times on a train, by the ex-husband of his current wife. This man (the killer) had a vile temper, in one of his fits of rage he destroyed the family piano. His wife divorced him on the grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment. He agreed to the divorce but pestered her constantly to come back to him. When she married T.J., he sent them letters threatening T.J.'s life. I guess they didn't take them seriously. They should have.

I also have as ancestor a full-blooded Native American named Rachel Whitecloud. Not sure which tribe. I guess my aunt couldn't find that info. The transcriber's note at the bottom of the page said it's listed on some of the family histories that she was a native person, but I guess that far back they really didn't care which tribe you came from, so no one wrote that down. Shoot. I'd really like to know that.

Well, that's it for now. Wanna get this posted before it hits midnight.

Edited to add: Something funky happened. It looked like it published, but it didn't. I'm hitting publish again on Tuesday morning and hoping that a) it still counts as Monday and b) blogger takes it this time