(From The Princess Bride)
Inigo Montoya: “I do not mean to pry, but you don’t by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?”
Man in Black: “Do you always start conversations this way?”
I love Inigo. He’s focused, passionate, and funny.
Intriguing,too.
Sort of like my new friend, Cathy. In just three meetings with me she has “completed” her 4-generation pedigree and is well on her way to filling in the details of the fifteen family groups.
I always give homework and rarely remember what assignment I gave. I should probably write them down? I’d be a fun teacher. My students would get away with a lot. But we’d also have fun learning, too. Exciting subjects drive themselves. Don’t you think?
Cathy has surprised me two times now by coming into the Family History Center having done hers. She’s amazing. She needs no reminders. We laughed about how tired she was. On Tuesday night we both left the Center and worked on some of her family history puzzles late into the night. She admitted that she had the next day off from work and spent the whole day looking for the link between two great grandparents with the same last name. That was the homework assignment she’d been given that she was so excited to share last night.
“You did?!” I squealed.
“Yup. I found them.” She started talking to herself as she fingered through her files, looking for the one with the goods in it while I peppered her with distracting questions.
I switched chairs to sit at her right, explaining that I sleep on the left side of the bed, but I’m used to sitting to her right. My friend got a chuckle out of that declaration.
“You mean they were sisters?” I asked.
“That means that their great-grandchildren, one a boy and the other a girl, got married?” I looked at her, waiting.
“”They’re a few logs removed from the wood pile,” she said matter-of-factly, staring straight ahead at the computer screen. Oh, my! She makes me laugh!
I had to get my cousins chart out to figure out what to call them. From now on it’s going to be hanging in the Center.”Cathy! Your mom and dad are third cousins!” No big deal, but really fun!
It was 8:30 and my ride had arrived, so we wrapped things up and I went home . While unwinding on the couch, Kyle asked, “What do you DO with people there?” which he followed up with, “I have NO interest in that at all!”
To which I replied, “It’s in the stories, Kyle. You get hooked in the stories. We (Cathy and I) opened up a World War I draft registration record and found out this guy had three fingers on his left hand.”
Kyle just stared at me with a squinched up nose. Guys love blood and guts and action! The kind that Inigo Montoya delivers. I think my son was starting to get it, but he just laughed and shook his head.
But my mind was already off imagining about how it had happened.
‘Cause in the end, that’s what intrigued me the most. And if Momma ain’t intrigued, ain’t NObody gonna be intrigued!
Ha! What intrigue have you found in your ancestors’ closets?
Remember 
George Harrison Dorman from Florida in the Confederate Army leading a regiment was wounded in Virginia fighting them stinkin’ Blue Belly’s from the North. His injuries allowed him to come home and I haven’t pieced all this history, but towards the end of the war I think he just said ‘I quit’.
He eventually served in the Florida Legislature I believe (or it might have been his son) and wrote a book about his experiences. For awhile, it was required reading in a history class at the Univ of Florida.
Sorry so long, but here’s an e-mail my nephew sent me:
Here is the paper I was telling you about in .pdf format. It was written by a FSU student as part of his MA degree in history. The paper basically examines the thoughts and ideas motivating southerners who fought during the Civil War. Half-way into the paper, the author quotes none other than George Harrison Dorman, who served in the Florida Infantry regiment that fought with the Army of Northern Virginia. As the source for this quote, it cites a book in the footnotes (with perhaps G.H. Dorman himself as the author.) I will attempt to locate this book, and ascertain if indeed, G.H. Dorman was himself an author of an earlier book. There is even a different Dorman listed at another point in the paper (as an author,) and I will try to find more on that source as well.
If my memory recalls, G.H. Dorman had a brother named David Dorman who also fought with him in the same regiment, though David died in a Richmond, VA military hospital of wounds received during the Petersburg campaign towards the end of the war. William Dorman (Big Daddy’s father?) would have been the younger brother of George and David (and a boy at the time of the war.) I think the Asst. Secretary of State for Florida in the early 1900s, John Dorman, was the son of G.H. Dorman.
In any event, I thought you would enjoy this bit of Dorman history I unearthed. I suspect there is a lot more here, as G.H. Dorman and his immediate children were very active in Florida politics and get recorded a lot throughout Florida history as a result. No doubt we are all starting to see a trend with the political thing here (See mom, Uncle Tommy and I can’t help it, its in the blood.)
Your son (and great nephew and nephew,)
Interesting stuff indeed…………
Wow! You are so lucky to have a nephew who has done so much research! So sad about David, especially since he’d served with his brother, George.! So you have at least one other author in your family? It would be fun to dig up the book(s) and see what their writing style was and if it’s similar to yours.
I don’t know if you’ve done a lot of research of that time, but there are so many George Harrisons, George Washingtons, and Benjamin Franklins that it’s hard to sort them all out to find which one belongs to your family! Very frustrating.
I LOVE researching the wars. I learn history and geography so much better when I find my ancestors living in it!
Thank you for sharing your nephew’s email!
Politics? Are you as passionate as they are?
As far as being out in the public and can mix easily in a crowd, that I can do. The compromising part and having to give up something to get something, I don’t think I would like to well. Our family also has preachers……..:).
Preachers….sorry to say, I’m not sure if I’d have enjoyed being a part of that heritage (the stories in my head tell me that it was a hard life for the whole family, maybe harder than the politician!).
One of my relatives helped to found an elevator company, or so I was told. There are lots of different stories about him.
He had a fight with his parents and left home. I think my dad has a postcard he wrote his mother asking if he could come home.
Every time I think about it I wonder how much more there is to this story.
Wow, Jack! I just found this comment (along with a ton more) in my spam mail!! Sorry!
That would make a really interesting story, if you ask me. The post card alone is sad.It would be fun to find some of the facts and follow him around in time and place and see if you could piece together his life. If you need access to Ancestry.com for a while just drop me a note and I’ll send you the info via email to let you play around for a while. But, beware. It’s very easy to get hooked!
It is indeed interesting sometimes to go down memory lane!
I remember the time when we used to sit with my dad and granddad and we made a proper family tree. And there was so much that came out of it, somethings that even my dad didn’t know! But yes, with time my grandfather explained everything to us and it was something new for all of us.
Similarly, we make sure to chalk down things we get to know from our ancestors from y moms side and my in-laws side also. My moms side was from the royal family, so it was fun to visit their ancestral home and check out all the ancient things there.
Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Thanks for coming by, Harleena! The memories leave with the people who have them unless they’ve written them down and passed them on. It’s a hard lesson learned too late by some of us, sad to say. I’d love to pick your brain someday about how you would (or how you have) researched your ancestry!! Have a wonderful weekend.
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Betsy, that’s an awesome story. I love the way you wove that together. It must be a ton of fun for you to dig into history like that. It certainly seems so anyway.
Thanks for sharing. Something I haven’t done much is look into my family name. Hmmmmmm…..
it’s a blast! my kind of fun!! take care ralph!
I finally came by! 🙂 I made it to your blog!
As for what intrigues me about my ancestry… my grandma comes from an Iranian background. So her ancestors were from there but they somehow traveled to India and settled there and my grandma and her parents were born in India. So, that is something that still gets me all interested. However, it was a painful past for them and they didn’t like talking too much about it which is sad because it becomes difficult for me to trace ancestry.
Hajra!
I found your comment in the spam mail! Oh, well..I never check spam.
I would love to learn more about ancestry from the Middle East, etc. I’ve heard it’s pretty difficult and sometimes mostly an oral tradition 9which makes it hard to document!) Make your relatives tell you what they know. Write it down. All of it! You’ll never regret the efforts you make!! Thanks for coming for a visit!