My Extended Pierpont Family Relatives in Wolcott

If you’ve read much of my blog over the past few years, it’s pretty obvious that I have been able to document a lot of connections to other individuals – both in the history of my hometown, Wolcott, CT, and in Connecticut history as well. Part of this is due to the sheer number of relatives that we all have as well as the modern tools we now have for doing genealogical research.

One’s family tree expands by a factor of two for every generation we go back – the father’s side and the mother’s side. From my own birth in the middle of the 20^th century back to the early 1700s there are about 8-9 generations. Thus there are a potential of several hundred great*7 grandparents in that length of time (2 to the 9^th power is 512). However, not all of one’s ancestral lines can be traced back that far, some were not in the US until later in history, and there are some duplicates where two branches converge. But with the current tools, I have about 200 documented ancestors at the great*7 grandparent level in my family tree. And with each of those individuals having the potential for perhaps several hundred descendants (for arguments sake let’s say 400), that gives me 80,000 possible individuals at various levels of “cousin-ness” (of which I have only documented a few thousand).

Until recent years, most of these distant connections would have been unknown. So while many of us may have had people growing up around us who were related to us in some fashion, we would not be aware of most of those connections. The ones we knew best were our first cousins, and, if we were fortunate enough, a few of our second cousins. That was true of me as well – my siblings and I knew all 15 or so of our first cousins and we interacted with them frequently, and we knew of and occasionally met some of our second cousins.

However, there was one branch of our family tree that was well documented. My mother’s maiden name was Pierpont, and the Pierpont Family Association maintained a large document which kept track of all the descendants of the New England Pierpont family (primarily the descendants of James Pierpont, one of my great*7 grandfathers). And since there was an annual Pierpont Family Reunion where all the people in this tree (at least those that we had an address for) were invited, we knew of and had an opportunity to meet with all the people in this descendant tree (they have met for every year since 1924). This is of course only one of the 200 ancestors that I have since documented, but the Pierpont family were pretty prolific and the potential pool of attendees was pretty large. Of those, those who attended numbered between 30 and 100, with there only being a single instance where the 100 was exceeded (1998).  But the attendee list was different each year, so we got to know perhaps a couple of hundred Pierpont relatives by meeting them and because the family descendant tree was so well documented, we knew the names of many more.

Our immediate family was relatively involved, with my grandfather and two of my uncles/aunts being president of the PFA at various times, my father having been the vice-president, and my mother having been the secretary for a few years as well. So our particular branch of the family tree were often the ones to be recognized for having the largest number attending, and when my aunt and uncle from Arizona were there a few times they received the distance trophy. In more recent years, with the generation of my parents having nearly all passed away, there has only occasionally been a representative from my immediate family (aunts/uncles/cousins/etc.). However, with my renewed interest in genealogy from the past few years, I am planning on attending this coming weekend!

But to get back to the point of this blog, I’d like to mention my Pierpont relatives who lived near me in my hometown and whom I knew growing up. They didn’t necessarily have the last name of Pierpont anymore due to them being descended through a female who took on her husband’s last name, but they are still relatives. So, in no particular order, here are my Pierpont relatives who lived in Wolcott (at least back when I lived there while growing up).

·         My Uncle Zeke (Clarence) and Aunt Babs (Barbara) Pierpont and their family who lived just a few houses from us (only my cousin Rob and his wife are still in Wolcott)

·         My Uncle Tony and Aunt Vi (Violet) Semeraro and their family who lived at the other end of town

·         The Kraft family (Howard & Marian) and their children and grandchildren (note that the Krafts were also related to the Peterson family in Wolcott). My 3^rd cousin, Bob Kraft, is the current PFA family historian/genealogist

·         Margaret [Miller] [Northrop] Hall – she was the mother of Marian [Northrop] Kraft and Jean [Northrop] Fleming

·         Byron and Jean Fleming

·         The Garrigus family (I’ve documented this connection here - http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/wolcott-history-inter-family-marriages.html). It is recorded in the PFA minutes from 1948 that “Morton Pierpont gave a humorous account on how families inter-marry, namely the Garriguses and Pierponts, and said he felt like his own grandpa.”

While this is certainly just a handful of individuals compared to all the other Wolcott families who are related to me through other of my ancestors, it is always nice to grow up in proximity to ones relatives.

Genealogy Story – Yale part 2

In a blog I wrote recently (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/genealogy-story-harvard-and-yale.html), I gave a list of the ten men who were involved in establishing the Collegiate School of Connecticut in 1701 – which became Yale just a few years later. In that blog, I described these men as follows:

·        Samuel Andrew (1656-1738), Harvard class of 1675, pastor in Milford, CT – Rector in 1707-1719, while at Harvard was a tutor to James Pierpont, Samuel Russell, Noadiah Russell, and Joseph Webb. He and Samuel Mather married sisters. His granddaughter married the grandson of Noadiah Russell and James Pierpont.

·        Thomas Buckingham (1646-1709), the only non-Harvard graduate, pastor in Saybrook, CT – the founders originally agreed to locate the Collegiate School in Saybrook and it was only with much resistance that it was relocated to New Haven.

·        Israel Chauncy (1644-1703), pastor in Stratford, CT – son of Charles Chauncy, president of Harvard, he and James Webb married sisters. In addition to his father, a brother and nephew were also ministers.

·        Samuel Mather (1650-1727), Harvard class of 1671, pastor in Windsor, CT – cousin of Cotton Mather

·        Rev. James Noyes II (1640-1719), Harvard class of 1659, pastor in Stonington, CT – a cousin to Timothy Woodbridge, father, grandfather, and other relatives were also ministers.

·        James Pierpont (1659-1714), Harvard class of 1681, pastor in New Haven, CT – related to Abraham Pierson by one marriage and to Thomas Buckingham by another marriage. His children married descendants of Noadiah Russell, Samuel Russell, and James Noyes. Five of his children either became ministers or were married to one. (See http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/genealogy-story-james-pierpont.html for further details).

·        Abraham Pierson (1646-1707), Harvard class of 1668, pastor in Killingworth, CT (later renamed Clinton) – first Rector of the Collegiate School, was supposed to teach in Saybrook, but due to his pastoral duties, taught at his parsonage in Killingworth. Son of a minister.

·        Noadiah Russell (1659-1713), Harvard class of 1681, pastor in Middletown, CT – two of his sons also became ministers.

·        Joseph Webb (1666-1732), Harvard class of 1684, pastor in Fairfield, CT

·        Timothy Woodbridge (1655-1732), pastor in Hartford, CT – son of a minister, his brother and son were also ministers. His daughter married a son of Abraham Pierson.

·        Samuel Russell (1660-1731), Harvard class of 1681, pastor in Branford, CT – 2^nd son of Rev. John Russell (1626-1692) of Hadley, MA, Harvard 1645, ministered in Wethersfield CT 1650-1659, then left CT and founded Hadley MA.

I’ve now had a chance to do some further genealogical research on these individuals with the goal of seeing what their connection (if any) is to me. I expected to find some of the below, but the degree of connectedness is pretty astounding. So, without further ado, here is how each of these men is related to me.

·        Samuel Andrew, grandfather-in-law of William Russell (my 1^st cousin 7 times removed)

·        Thomas Buckingham, 2^nd husband of Mary [Willet] [Hooker] whose first husband was my great*8 uncle

·        Israel Chauncy, married to 1^st cousin of my great*8 grandfather, Abraham Nichols. His wife and Joseph Webb’s wife were sisters.

·        Samuel Mather, cousin of sister-in-law of James Pierpont (through his first wife)

·        James Noyes II, father-in-law of Abigail Pierpont (my great*7 aunt)

·        James Pierpont, great*7 grandfather His children married descendants of, Samuel Russell

·        Abraham Pierson, uncle of first wife of James Pierpont

·        Noadiah Russell, great*7 grandfather, his daughter married Joseph Pierpont.

·        Joseph Webb, married to 1^st cousin of my great*8 grandfather, Abram Nichols

·        Timothy Woodbridge. His daughter married a son of Abraham Pierson. Also a cousin of James Noyes II.

·        Samuel Russell, great*3 grandfather of my great*3 aunt, Abigail [Russell] Pierpont

While some of these connections are multiple “hops”, e.g. cousin of a cousin sort-of-thing, the fact that I can document a family connection to every single one of them seems pretty amazing to me.  And it is further demonstration of what I quoted in that earlier blog:

The clergy, unlike farmers or artisans, were relatively successful in developing effective local and trans-local alliances which, in turn, led to patterns of collective action and to formal corporate institutions. This is not surprising, for the clergy were, by their very nature, a group with clearly defined common interests, a group whose members had been trained together at either Harvard or Yale (thus having shared an intensive common socialization experience), who were often sons of clergymen themselves (thus having kin-continuity), and who presided over a social institution, the church, whose interests they had a vital interest in preserving. The clergy, as earlier suggested, followed simultaneously two patterns of alliance-making, a bifurcation dictated by the non-inheritable nature of the clerical office. On the one hand, they cultivated close ties with important lay families in the communities in which they served, which strengthened their power in their congregations and opened up occupational opportunities for their sons. On the other hand, they cultivated trans-local alliances with other clergymen (to consolidate professional identity) and with powerful laymen (to further the interests of the church).

Genealogy Story – My Hill Relatives

My father’s sister, Dorothy (known to me as Aunt Dot), married Robert Clinton Hill (known to me as Uncle Bob), the brother of my father’s best friend in high school, Harold Hill (also known to me as Uncle Harold, even though he was not a blood relative). Since I’ve written extensively about the Russell side of the family tree, I thought I should write about the Hill family as well.

Both my father’s Russell ancestors and my mother’s Pierpont ancestors came to America (specifically to the Massachusetts Bay Colony) around 1630 during the Great Migration which ran from 1620 to 1640 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan_migration_to_New_England_(1620%E2%80%9340)). Approximately 20,000 individuals, mostly in family units, came during this time. However, when the English Civil War began in 1641, the rate of migration dropped sharply.

The original Hill family member to come to American, John Hill (1598-1647), had been born in England. He, together with his wife and young son, John B (1624-1688), also migrated around 1630, first to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, but about 1640 moving up the coast to Dover, New Hampshire. The Hill family would remain in New Hampshire or nearby Maine for the next several generations.

While there were many children in each generation after John B, the line that led down to my Uncle Bob all had names beginning with the letter “J” for the next several generations. In order, these were another John (1665-1718), Joshua (1698-1774), Joseph (1743-1797), and James (1774-1847). Finally, in the 1800s, the line of J’s was broken with the birth of Oliver (1801-1883), then Sylvester (1823-1897). Sylvester also moved away from Maine to S. Weymouth, MA. (See http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/r/a/b/David-E-Rabing/GENE3-0008.html for complete details of each of these individuals.)

Sylvester married Mary Ann Fessenden in 1847 and had four children with her. When she died in 1861, he remarried Aurelia Randall the following year and had six more children with her. One of these was Frank Clinton Hill (1876-1963).

Frank married Georgia Knussman (1880-1930) in 1901. Georgia had been born in Connecticut but her father, George, was a German immigrant, and her mother, Mary, was the daughter of two Irish immigrants. That made Frank and Georgia’s children half-English, one-quarter-German, and one-quarter-Irish. Frank and Georgia initially lived in Wallingford, CT where Georgia’s parents lived, but then moved to Waterbury, CT. They had four children – Frank (b. 1912), Edith (b. 1914), Robert (b. 1916), and Harold (b. 1919).

My Aunt Dot and Uncle Bob met when my father and his sister began living with their grandparents (my great-grandparents) in Waterbury in 1937. The Hill family lived right around the corner and Dot and Bob, besides then being close neighbors, also shared a common birthday, 13 October 1916. They married the following year – 1938. Initially, she just moved the one block and the newlyweds shared the house with Bob’s father (then widowed), his older sister Edith, and his younger brother, Harold. That’s not a typical living arrangement for a newlywed couple, but it seemed to work out for all involved.

Over the next decade, they had two children (Carolyn and Bob) and moved several times. Meanwhile my father continued living with his grandparents, then served in WWII. His grandparents both died while he was in the service, so when he finished his service in 1946, he could no longer return “home”, so he lived for a few months with his sister and her family – which, very conveniently, was just a few blocks away from his new fiancée. My parents married a few months later and moved into a home in Wolcott. Harold married six months later and for the first part of his married life he and my Aunt Gloria lived in an upstairs room in my parent’s house while their residence was being completed at the other end of town. Harold and Gloria had three children (Bruce, Debbie, and Craig). In 1952, Dot and Bob also moved to Wolcott into a new home on Laurel Lane. With all three families in the same town, we were all pretty close growing up and I spent a lot of time with all my Hill cousins.

The close physical ties of being in the same town did not last forever, but the family ties remained and we all still met when we could. Aunt Dot and Uncle Bob moved to Florida when he retired, but our house in PA was a stop each year on their annual visit back to CT where they stayed with my parents for a few weeks. Uncle Harold divorced Aunt Gloria in 1960 and he eventually remarried and moved to Southern CA. That whole generation has now passed on. Also, all three of my Hill male cousins have died at younger ages than I am now, the most recent being my cousin Craig who died just last year due to the effects of his exposure to Agent Orange while serving in the military in Vietnam. But I still remain in touch with my cousin Carolyn via email and with her daughter (my cousin once removed) Jennifer, my “cousin” Debbie, and Craig’s wife Paula on Facebook. Family is still family!

Memorial Day Tribute – Linus Walter Russell

My great-uncle Linus was born in 1896 in Sherman, CT. The only known picture of him is with his father, Louis, and 2 of his 5 siblings, Erskine (my grandfather) and Loretta. Linus was about 7 at the time and his siblings were 9 and 5. The picture had been taken after the death of his mother and the resultant sending of the youngest siblings to live with relatives.

When WWI broke out the US was not immediately involved, but in 1917 President Wilson requested a declaration of war. Not wanting to go overseas, Linus, then 21 years old, instead enlisted in the Navy. He enlisted on January 19, 1918 at the recruiting station in Buffalo, NY. He was given the rank of Motor Machinist Mate, 2^nd class and assigned to the port in Philadelphia. After a month of training, he was assigned to the USS Maine for two months, then transferred to the USS Louisville in New York City for nearly two months. He was discharged for unknown reasons on June 27, 1918, having served for only 159 days. However, his “freedom” did not last long.

Just 5 weeks later, on August 9, 1918, Linus was drafted into the Army and assigned to Company K of the 346^th Infantry as a private. After just a few weeks of training at Fort Dix in NJ, he was scheduled to sail out of NY for Europe on August 26, 1918. His name appears on the ship’s roster, but is scratched out in red pen with the letters “AWOL”.

The story picks up again less than two weeks later in the form of an FBI report on September 4^th. During a routine investigation looking for German aliens, an FBI agent encountered Linus on a farm in Trenton NJ. He asked whether Linus had registered. Linus said that his registration card was “up at the house”, but he first went into the barn. The agent questioned the farmer’s wife at the house who asked, “Is he a deserter?” The agent did not think so at the time and responded that he just wanted to see his registration. Looking back toward the barn, he spotted Linus heading for the woods and shouted for him to stop, which he did. After a few more lies, Linus eventually showed the agent his bag which contained his soldier’s uniform and admitted escaping from Fort Dix a few days earlier. He attributed his desertion to wanting to see his mother before going abroad (which of course was also a bit of a lie, since that would have been his step-mother).

Linus was returned to Fort Dix, was reassigned to Company G of the 30^th Infantry on September 13, 1918, and finally left as part of the AEF on September 25, 1918. Unfortunately, this reassignment turned out to be a bad thing as it put him in “the wrong place at the wrong time.” During his short few months in Europe, his unit was involved in heavy fighting. I have tried to find out what exactly happened to Linus, but there are no definitive answers. One of the family stories I heard growing up was that he was involved in a mustard gas attack.

Linus returned to the US on January 30, 1919 on a hospital ship, the St. Nazaire. After several months of treatment, he was honorably discharged on June 16, 1919 but was 100% disabled. He spent the remainder of his life in various VA mental hospitals in CT and NY. He passed away in 1948, the same year that I was born.

On this Memorial Day in 2017, I remember my great-uncle Linus, whom I never had the opportunity to meet. Despite his two attempts at escaping from service in the Army in WWI, one via enlisting in the Navy, and one via going AWOL, he did serve. Although he was not killed in the sense that his body remained alive for another 29 years, his life was taken from him and he “lived” in a mental hospital for all those years. So, for making that ultimate sacrifice, I honor him as well.

Ernest Hemingway and Me

Last night I was reading an account of my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont. The next-to-last line of the article I was reading was about James’ children. It said, “Hezekiah married Lydia Hemingway and settled at New Haven.” This made me wonder about the Hemingway family and if there was any connection to the author, Ernest Hemingway. After some research, this is what I found.

Ralph Hemingway was born in Yorkshire, England. In 1633, as part of the great migration, he came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There he settled in Roxbury. He married the following year and he and his wife had seven children, one of them being named Samuel. Ralph remained in Roxbury the rest of his life, dying in 1678.

Samuel Hemingway (1636-1711) moved to the fledgling New Haven Colony in Connecticut some time in his early years. It was there that he married Sarah Cooper in 1661. He was then 25 and she was 16. Samuel and Sarah had ten children, two of the younger ones being Abraham (1677-1752) and Jacob (1683-1754). As members of the New Haven Colony, the family would have attended the New Haven Congregational Church. When my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, became the minister of that church in 1685, the family would have been among those listening to his sermons each Sunday.

When he was 18, Jacob was among the first students of the Collegiate School of Connecticut (later Yale) which had been founded by James Pierpont just a few months prior. He graduated in 1704 and upon his graduation began a new church in East Haven (the Church of Christ). See (https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=110304121) for more information. One of his children, Lydia (1715-1779), married the youngest son of James Pierpont, Hezekiah (1712-1741). I have told the story of Hezekiah here (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/05/afs-hillary-clinton-and-my-ancestors.html).

Meanwhile, Jacob’s older brother, Abraham, married Sarah Talmadge (my 2^nd cousin, 8 times removed), making a second connection to the Hemingway family. They continued living in the New Haven area. Their youngest son, Abraham (1727-1796), married Mercy Tuttle (my 3^rd cousin, 7 times removed), making yet a third connection to the Hemingway family. Their youngest son, Jacob (1764-1838) moved from New Haven to Plymouth, CT, just one town away from my hometown of Wolcott, CT. The next several generations (Jacob Street (1791-1863), Allen (1808-1886), and Anson (1844-1926)) continued to live in Plymouth. They are mentioned prominently here (https://www.cga.ct.gov/hco/books/History_of_the_Town_of_Plymouth.pdf). Others in the church there with connections to my hometown included the families of Blakesley/Blakeslee, Pond, Barnes, Adkins, Beach, and Hoadley. The current mayor of Plymouth grew up just a few houses from me and his wife is a school classmate of mine.

Sometime late in Allen’s life, he moved from Plymouth to Oak Park, Cook County, IL, although when he died in 1886 his body was returned to Plymouth where he is buried. Anson, continued to live in Oak Park.

Anson’s son, Clarence (1871-1928), was born in Oak Park, as was Clarence’s son, Ernest (1899-1961). Ernest was born in his grandfather’s house. Through my several connections to him, Ernest is my 9^th cousin, once removed.

In his early years, Ernest and his family spent the summers in Northern Michigan where the family had a home on Walloon Lake. However, Ernest developed a number of friendships in the small town of Horton Bay, MI – a one mile boat ride across Walloon Lake, then a 4-mile walk. The town of Horton Bay continues to celebrate the life of their famous “son” to this day. It was in the original Horton Bay Methodist Church that Ernest was married for the first time in 1921.

In a little book about the history of Horton Bay (http://www.boynelibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/100-YEARS-IN-HORTON-BAYMB.pdf), there are several mentions of Ernest Hemingway. I especially note that the person who drove the newly married Hemingways back to Walloon Lake was John Koteskey. I got to know several of the Koteskey family (more on that below). Horton Bay was the setting for several of Ernest’s short stories. See http://www.michiganhemingwaysociety.org/hemsites.html for more information on various Hemingway sites in the area. When my wife’s parents died, I was the executor of their estate and added it to the properties on the Horton Creek which belong to the Little Traverse Conservancy which is mentioned in this website.

Although the original church where the Hemingways married is no longer there, the predecessor church is the current United Methodist Church right across the road (it was a United Brethren Church back then until the two denominations merged to create the current United Methodists. My wife attended that church and that was where we were married in 1971 (50 years after the marriage of Ernest). The township school mentioned in the above “hemsites” list is where we had our wedding reception. This church is also where I got to know some of the older individuals (Koteskey, Crouderfield and others) who still remembered Ernest as a young man in the early 1900s.

It’s amazing to me the number of connections that I have to this famous author – from my great*7 grandfather being the minister to his family, to my several connections by marriage, to growing up in the town next to where his ancestors lived for several generations, to my being married in the same small village and knowing people who had first-hand knowledge of him. I’ve read a number of his writings over the years, but I’m now interested in reading his short stories about Northern Michigan.

Genealogy Story – Filling a Hole in Your Life

It all started somewhat innocently. Around the end of February I had written a blog about my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, and had posted a link to it in the Pierpont Family Association Facebook page. Two weeks later a person who I did not know, named Gaye, left a comment on the blog which said, “…this is a great and interesting article for me. I am trying to put together some genealogy or at least ‘connections’ for my friend here in Tennessee, son of Russell James Pierpont. Could you please email me?”

As is often the case when I get such rather scanty information like this, I like to do some quick checking to see who it is that is being asked about. Within a short amount of time that evening I had determined who she was talking about (by checking her out, finding her Facebook account, and locating a Pierpont in her list of Facebook friends). I then made a quick check of the Pierpont Family tree (which I have saved in my favorites), and located her “friend” as well as where he fit into the tree. My response to her was,

“I also sent you a message via facebook. I’m presuming that your friend is Ron James Pierpont. I’m good at doing research! He is my 4^th cousin. His family tree is Ron James P_ (1952) <- Russell James P_ (1929) <- Russell Raymond P_ (1905) <- William Seabury P_ (1833-1883) <- Austin P_ (1791). Austin is also my great*3 grandfather.”

“It also appears that Ron’s brother Keith as well as his sister-in-law and niece attended the Pierpont Family Association meeting in 1998 (they are also on his friend list in Facebook). How am I doing?

As our conversation continued, I learned that Ron had virtually no knowledge of his ancestry on the Pierpont side. His parents had divorced when he was just a toddler, and his mother cut all ties to his father (including calling Ron by the last name of her new husband). So Ron grew up knowing nothing about his father or any of his Pierpont relatives. He was soon going to be turning 65 and Gaye, a friend from his church, wanted to be able to present him with some information about this side of his family. She had stumbled onto the Pierpont Family Association Facebook page, noticed my blog, and wondered if I would be able to help her.

Thus began a rather exciting (for both of us) couple of weeks of my putting together a comprehensive genealogy report for Ron – all without him knowing anything about it.

Because of the excellent records in the Pierpont Family tree (maintained with care by my cousin Bob Kraft), and because Ron and I were 4^th cousins (relatively close as things go), I had a lot of basic material already, including the complete family line from the origin of the family name to Ron in the 31^st generation. I also had written a number of blogs about our common Pierpont ancestors. But I had to fill in the blanks for the more recent years, including (I was hopeful) seeing if I could find any pertinent pictures of his family.

Doing research on more recent events is a bit more challenging than looking through historical records such as census records, etc. But I have done a bit of that too and was up to the challenge. Through things like online obituary archives, Connecticut marriage records, Facebook friend lists and other sources, I was able to piece together a lot of what I needed. Through the above sources, I was able to identify contact information for Ron’s older brother who lived in Long Island, and Ron’s step-sister (who had been adopted by his father when his father remarried right after divorcing Ron’s birth mother). While I could put together a pretty complete family tree for Ron, including all of his father’s descendants from both marriages, I decided to contact Ron’s brother and step-sister to see if they could help me in my search for pictures, as well as to help verify the other information that I had found.

While some people are very upset to receive unsolicited questions about events that may have been painful, that turned out to be the right move in this case. I was able to get a couple of good pictures, including a 4-generation picture of Ron’s brother, his father, his grandfather, and great-grandfather (the whole Pierpont line). I was also able to get a picture of Ron’s father’s grave back in Connecticut.

I put all of this together over about a 2-week period into a 42-page report that included genealogy trees, obituaries for his relatives who had passed away, several pictures, and copies of all the genealogy stories about our common ancestors that I had blogged about over the past few years. I sent copies to Ron’s brother and sister-in-law (as a thank you for their help), as well as to Gaye. She printed it and put it into a nice presentation folder for giving to Ron on his 65^th birthday.

Her email to me the following day said,

“Hey! It was pretty emotional. I was going to take a picture but it became really personal real quick so I just couldn't take a picture. He stared and turned pages and made remarks 'I did not know that,' 'I have never seen them.' 'There's my grandfather!' He really got emotional and thanked me but I told him you had all the work ready for him. I just found you! He was silent and engrossed in the pages. I believe his whole view of his life has changed. He has that sense of security of his past that most of us have and he just hasn't. Your contact info is there for him.  I believe he will want to call you when he is ready.  It is still all sinking in. Thank you so much for just being there prepared for this time for Ron. My short part of this was a special journey of its own.”

I recently had a chance to talk to my new cousin on the phone. He is excited not only for himself, having now been able to fill in this major hole in his background, but for the opportunity to pass this information on to his two daughters.

As I have said a number of times, I get excited about the research that I do and the connections between genealogy, geography, and history. And having the opportunity to help change someone’s life through this research is a real blessing to me as well.

Scenes from My Hospital Bed

One finger typing is not my forte, but it's all I have here in room 4KS40 at the hospital so I'll see how it works. This is the third bed I've occupied since Friday night - first the ER, then the ICU, and now the CCU. It's probably going to take me all day to write this in between all the sleeping, but more on that later.

Setting the Stage

It's hard to know how this infection began and where it got into my blood. My body, that wonderful creation of God, had been fighting it for a while, but those defense mechanisms broke down on Friday morning. I had come back from running errands and about 9.30 started getting chills and sweats. (Interestingly, one of those errands was my every 8 weeks donating blood but this time the needle got a clot almost immediately. Just one more evidence of God's timing as not only was I going to have a full supply for all that was about to happen, but this prevented my infected blood from being passed on to others.)

Continuing the story, I wrapped myself in blankets and got into bed, figuring this was something like a stomach flu. But over the next several hours I kept getting worse. Meanwhile my wife (another of God's blessings), was managing taking care of the boys by herself. Friday is bath day. She would check in on me from time to time, brought me some juice but I just brought it back up. By early evening she gave me an ultimatum (thanks Honey), either start eating or I'm taking you to the hospital. I told her to call 911 as knew I wouldn't be able to manage the stairs and the ride in. I crawled over to the living room on Kim's side of the house since that has outside stairs, climbed up on the couch and promptly passed out. The next I knew the EMT was standing over me. They put me in a chair stair, took me down and loaded me into the ambulance.

The ER - Organized Chaos

By its very nature the ER is a busy place. My bed was room 2, all the way across from the ambulance entrance, but close to the CT machine across the hall and the hall to the rest of the facility. While I was only there a few hours, a lot happened. Remove clothing in exchange for a hospital gown, two IV lines, chest and foot x-rays, abdominal CT scan, blood draws for analysis and cultures, check of vital signs, and other things I probably missed. Because they needed to wait for lab results and because my blood pressure was so low 80/40, they sent me to the ICU.

Because it was relatively early on Friday night I didn't hear any reports of gunshot wounds, knifings, or drunken drivers. But then I was only there for two hours.

The ICU - By the Book

Around 10pm on Friday I was transported by gurney down a number of halls to my new location at 2KS34 one of the several ICUs in the hospital. Because of the terrain I was now on the second floor even though at the same level as the ER had been.

The ICU is also a busy place, with teams of doctors, nurses, techs, and assorted others like housekeeping, food specialists, patient representatives and others I've probably missed. One of the several nurses’ stations was right outside my door. With so many involved in the patients, of necessity they do everything “by the book”.

I had a nice view out my window of a patio area with large planter boxes of trees, etc, and the treed area south of the hospital beyond. But because I was confined to bed the only thing I could see was the reflection of it in the windows of the adjacent wing - my wife described the rest of it to me.

By this time I had lots of tubes and wires connecting me to the room. Five leads for continuous vital monitoring, a finger lead for blood oxygen monitoring, an IV in each arm/hand (one with 4 drips of various types and the other free for periodic ones), a blood pressure cuff on a 15 minute cycle, leg cuffs on a one minute cycle, and a tube concoction called a Foley (a urinary catheter with a balloon on the end so it wouldn't come out). I wasn't going far!

I spent the next two days in the ICU. In addition to all the connections, I got finger sticks every few hours for blood sugar levels (and an insulin shot if it was over 155), and periodic blood draws for lab work or cultures. I felt like a human pin cushion!

After the first day they had determined that the infection was primarily strep group B with a little staph on the side. By then the Foley was out, and I was down to a single type of antibiotic. Yeah!

But that meant that I was going to be moved to my third bed.

I should also mention before finishing this stage that the ICU was on lock down mode as they had two patients with protection orders. But at least my wife as well as both our pastors and an elder were let in to visit me.

The CCU - The Storm within the Calm

Yes, I know, that statement usually goes the other way. But this way seems to match the circumstances. My third and final bed was 4KS40, just two floors up from the last one, but a world apart.

I checked in here about 6pm on Sunday and would be here a little less than 3 days. I'd gotten my supper downstairs but hadn't been able to eat much. I really wanted to catch up on lost sleep. I tried for a while but my fever was back and I couldn't get comfortable. Finally asked for a dose of liquid Tylenol (I have a psychological block on swallowing pills dating back to my growing up in a Christian Science household). After taking that I was able to get about 3 hours sleep. This floor is very quiet at night. When I woke back up I became very aware of what my body was telling me, now that the initial symptoms and the fever were gone. It was telling me how hard it was working for me. I was aware that my kidneys were working hard to remove all the white blood cells as well as the spent medicine from my body. My heart was telling me about how it was trying to stay healthy all the while it continued to pump the infected blood around. So while the room was quiet there was a war being waged on the inside!

It's interesting how your body can talk to you when you take the time to listen to it.

Meanwhile, I was down to just one antibiotic and all the continuous monitoring was replaced by the tech coming by every several hours. So I had a lot fewer wires and tubes. I was almost able to be mobile, but my body was telling me to give it time to continue the battle. So I just lay there, periodically switching from side to side, and resting as I could in between nurse/tech/doctor visits. I ordered meals, but didn't eat much of it. My body just wanted time to do its thing.

The doctor told me that my release criteria was 48 hours after my last fever spike. Since that was the one in the early hours of Monday, that meant early Wednesday at best. So I decided to just continue listening to my body and not trying to push it.

Monday night was my best ever. Apart from having to wake every so often for vitals checks or another dose of my meds, I slept the entire night. Tuesday, that's today, I felt “normal” whatever that means. I sat up in bed for an hour, ate my entire breakfast, then got in a chair (with permission of course), got a sponge bath and fresh gown, brushed my teeth, ate my entire lunch (food here is excellent), used the bathroom instead of a urinal, went for a walk (again with permission), and began living again.

My discharge is set for tomorrow afternoon as I can't miss more than one dose of my IV meds and the home health care person can't see me at home until Thursday. So now I'm waiting for a delicious supper to arrive and I'll have a few more good meals and more quiet time tomorrow. But I can't wait to get back home, to shower and shave (I'm pretty scruffy looking), and give my family some overdue hugs.

Closing Thoughts

Listen to your body. If it's telling you to get medical attention, do it. If it's telling you to give it rest, do it.

Listen to your spouse/significant other/family. Sometimes they can see what's going on when you can't.

Enjoy the world around you for as long as you have. There is beauty in many things.

Appreciate those who you come into contact with. I've been saying thanks to not only the nurses and doctors, but the unsung others like housekeeping, patient transport, food service, etc. One of the transport guys this morning has only been doing this for a few weeks, so I complimented him on learning his way around so well.

And, most importantly, thank the God who gave us such marvelous bodies. To Him be the glory!