Astounding Find Followed by All Too Much Fun

The Big Find

Nature abhors a vacuum and my personal entropy was filled yesterday with a whimsical realization of a long held plan. Since I was at loose ends, with no projects and certainly no supervision, I decided on a journey north seeking my own version of roots. I’ve been very interested over the past decade or so in tracking down my ancestry. Tracing my surname back always ran into a road block in Antrim, New Hampshire. I know my great, great-grandfather was born there in 1821 but there’s nothing available on his father.

Downtown Antrim

A few years ago I learned he was born, ostensibly out of wedlock, to a young Antrim lass who went on to have large family elsewhere while granddad stayed in Antrim before moving to Keene and ultimately dying in the Civil War. I’ve tried a number of ways of tracking down his parentage. My working theory has always been a guy with our surname fathering the child and then dying before marrying the mother of my ancestor. Since Antrim’s town records were destroyed in a fire during the 19^th century I didn’t have a paper trial to follow. We now arrive at my plan. Although I grew up close to Antrim I’d never set foot in town but I figured I could visit a couple of the local cemeteries and see if anyone with my name died in 1821. I did the google earth thing and identified a town cemetery and almost as a second thought also spotted what I thought looked like a boneyard hidden from the road near where the historical center of the town was.

First Cemetery

I drove into town and walked around a little bit trying to imagine my progenitors walking the same pathways. Antrim is a very small but picturesque locale. I found the main cemetery and spent 45 minutes walking through the tombstones. I found a lot of monuments to the family of the gal my great, great-grandfather married before leaving Antrim and even a road and hill named after that family. I couldn’t find anything with my surname on it and as I prepared to drive out of town tried to find that hidden graveyard I spotted on google earth.

The Hidden Cemetery

I stopped by the side of the road and followed an overgrown path back into the woods. I was about to give up when the well preserved cemetery, dominated by a huge apple tree, appeared as I walked through the last line of obscuring trees. I started my inspection anew and found a huge section of the aforementioned grandmother’s family. I made my way down to furthest corner figuring my quest would come up empty. I spotted two very old markers standing by themselves in the corner by a brook. The stones were worn by time but I could clearly make out the names.

Paydirt

The gravestone marked the burial place of a man with not only the same surname as my grandfather and I but also the very same, and rare, first name of my great, great-grandfather. I was understandably excited and astounded by my find. I traced out what the rest of the stone had to say – it marked his death in, yep, 1821! He died late in the same year as my ancestor was born and shared the exact same uncommon first and last name. He was 38 years old when he died and as I continued to read I learned his wife(!!) died twelve years later. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this out. The only question is whether his wife killed him after he impregnated my great, great, great-grandmother! I’m sure there’s a story there I’ll never learn, there were no other children buried in the family plot so maybe his wife was barren and this was agreed to – the imagination is free at this point to explore. So a very long story that won’t mean anything special to anyone except the writer but I was genuinely amazed at my genealogical detective work.

His Latest Descendant (l)

I made my way south after my field trip through the now peaked and gorgeous autumn leaves. I took some of the small, back country roads eschewing the highways and tried to imagine my forebears using these ancient ways as well. I had a date in Rhode Island to assist Great Aunt with some small home improvement projects which we would then celebrate with an evening at my favorite Irish pub – McShawn’s with Soxfather’s awesome family.

Part of the Gang Including Namesake Nephew

The projects went well and Great Aunt delivered a fantastic dinner featuring one of our mother’s signature dishes to complete a day steeped in nostalgia. The gathering at McShawn’s was everything I hoped it would be and a truly welcome relief from my recent solitary lifestyle. We had the added benefit of watching the Yankees season end as they lost a 7^th game to the team that also eliminated the Bosox. Soxfather’s sister was identified as the female equivalent of the Cantankerous Friend. We already knew of her mystical powers capable of derailing entire baseball seasons and she opined that my Cantankerous Friend was one of the nicest, most polite men she had ever met. The entire table broke out in laughter at this point. Soxfather accused her of causing their shared father to spin in his grave when she decided she was rooting for the Yankees – yet another indication of her embedded cantankerousness.

Ms Cantankerous in Action

With Great Aunt

My Namesake Nephew also joined us with h is gal and we had a lot of fun catching up and sharing stories. Hanging with these people, as I have pointed out before, is nothing if not medicinal for the soul. We dominated that corner of the pub until shortly before closing when the entire bar, except for Ms. Cantankerous, erupted in joy at the final Yankee out. It was a very long day but very well spent with family ancient and present day

The Bad Cinema project count rises to #38 out of 100, with Unknown World an appropriately bad black and white journey to center of earth.