In a way, this book was my mentor for five years. I learned more as the author than I could have imagined I would. Pouring through family history: very old postcards (with very old stamps), family histories, family trees … In one branch, I found (from the “other side”) a not-too-distant cousin who was starting QB at University of Nebraska’s football team back in 1910-1911. Pretty cool. I found that we (my ancestors) have claim to 100 acres at the top of a mountain in Pennsylvania. Also pretty cool, though there is dispute because my ancestors temporarily left the area and someone else claimed it, kind of a modern variation on “squatters” who take over rental properties. Then there’s the family whose three daughters married the three sons of another family. Sounds like it would be kind of a wild story, but it wasn’t that uncommon back then. Rural populations tended to be small, and hey, if a man and woman are interested in each other, it’s quite probable that their siblings would also find interest.
We can follow the Stevens family (my mom’s mom’s family) back to the mid-1700s, but we can take one of the in-law families (Nef) back to 14th century (around 1386) in Switzerland. Now that’s pretty cool. Geoffrey Chaucer (of Canterbury Tales fame) would have been alive then. Who knows? My great-great-great grand-something may have been the source for Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath story (heh heh).