They were absolutely fascinating. I’m the palest reflection of my mother. She had an almost photographic memory and could remember the jokes her college professors told. But she mostly played mental games, rather than using it for something more. When she died, she asked how everything she knew could disappear, and it tore through me. Thus my 30,000 pages website. Everything I know gets shoved out to everyone so that it won’t die with me.
The grandfather who raised me was a railroads signal engineer who invented a number of signals. As a young man he worked for the Edison company and was brought to Edison’s NJ lab to teach Edison about signals. For a week daddy slept on a cot in the lab and Edison would awaken him at night with questions. After a week, Edison knew everything about signals and daddy was exhausted and came home.
My other grandfather was a gold miner who won and lost fortunes from Alaska to central america. Stetson, six-shooter and a newspaperman whose stories were on front pages with lead-in bios from other writers.
His father-in-law was brought to D.C. by Stanton to run the Lincoln assassination investigation. He was one of the special judge advocates at the trial and put together the records for hte Library of Congress.
And on and on and on and on. I learned my history out of genealogy.
Sounds like those characters were very alive and involved in living and doing meaningful things. Congrats. Thanks for sharing such.
I don't think anything is lots. Heaven records everything.