M. Thomas Apple's Blog, page 61

Destiny in the Future: A tribute

[image error]On October 29, 2018, my mother Linda A Langworthy Apple died.

On October 31, 2018, I discovered an unpublished science fiction book in my mother’s dresser. The manuscript was buried under high school and nursing school yearbooks and diplomas.

I think it’s time for it to be published.

To be fair, my mother did tell me about it a few years ago. She claimed she had written a “Star Trek” fan novel when the original series was on NBC in the late 1960s. But it was “adolescent romantic garbage.” And she refused to let me read it.

I don’t know how much fan fiction was around in 1968 (the manuscript is undated but in one version of Chapter 1 the story begins on May 29, 1968, which was the day after her high school graduation). But I wonder if this story may have been one of the very first.

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Yet unpublished. Vanity presses of course existed, but my mother didn’t have the money. And, as she stressed twice, at least, she felt she didn’t have the talent for fiction writing. Not to mention that NBC (and later Paramount and now CBS) would no doubt have prevented publication of an unauthorized Star Trek novel.

So she scrubbed all the Trek references, and left it unedited and unpublished in the original typewriter paper package. But she kept it through at least five house moves: Lansingburgh to Troy, two different apartments in Troy, then to Berne, and finally to Warrensburg.

Clearly, she was emotionally attached to this manuscript, despite feeling it was “garbage.”

I knew my father was a professional writer (drivers’ manuals, press releases, tons of reports and newspaper columns) but I always wondered where my desire for fiction writing had come. Now I know.

So I’m retyping the manuscript to Destiny in the Future, with an eye to publish it as a paperback and ebook, in my mother’s name, by her birthday next June.

There’ll be a Preface to explain a few references in the story and give some overall background to the time period in which it was written (yes, the dialogue and descriptions are very ’60s), including some religious details (she was definitely a Believer, and it shows throughout the story). The book will also include a few variations of Chapter 1 (she never seemed to have decided on which version to use, so I’m making a best-guess). Typos will be fixed (she had used an old-fashioned typewriter borrowed from her father, and then handwritten some changes as well). I’ll keep the story, unedited, in my mother’s voice. There are a few rough spots that personally I would have edited had the story been my own. But this is my mother’s story. The way she intended it to be read.

Also included will be an aborted attempt at another novel, which featured a blind English student teacher falling in love with a black African-American neighbor (risqué for even the ’60s) and a brief biography.

Of my mom. Because she was a complicated, intense person, and she deserves a tribute. It’s the least I can do – with any and all proceeds donated directly to her favorite spot in town, Richard’s Library, from which she borrowed literally hundreds of books.

Stubborn. Opinionated. Passionate. Loyal. Demanding. Unyielding. Romantic.

I hope you will find the story to be an apt tribute to her.

(NB. I will resume posting about family history momentarily. This past week – in which I wrote my own mother’s obituary – has been excruciatingly difficult for my family. Tragedy brings family together, but it also breaks the heart and taxes the spirit.)

A farewell journey

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May the roads bring success to you,

May the winds be forever at your back,

May the sunshine be warm on your face,

May the rains fall lightly upon your fields, until we meet again.

And may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat

Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl

Go lonraí an ghrian go te ar d’aghaidh

Go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna

Agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís,

Go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú.

 

Good bye, Mom. Your final journey awaits, and I cannot follow. But your memory will here linger still, until I have the courage to go on.

Old-fashioned letters: Wow, what a fossil

[image error]Since I don’t have access to a printer for a while (on a research stay in Montréal for a while), I decided to write a letter.

You know, on paper. With lines. That stuff made from trees that you can still find everywhere although nobody under the age of 25 ever uses it any more.

I hadn’t written an actual handwritten letter since probably before 1995. It felt…oddly satisfying.

Of course, I rambled on for 12 pages before I realized it. But imagine that; imagine no email, no tweets and posts and shares, and actually writing a letter that *only one other person will ever see.* (My mother in the hospital, in case you’re wondering.)

Can kids these days even conceive of such a thing, let alone actually write one?

Just think: You who are born into the digital age, you will never know the frustration of constantly confusing “stationary” with “stationery.”

‘Cause, what’s “stationery” again?

Oh, yeah. That stuff made from trees.

Old fossil. Jeez, get back to writing about SF already. (Getting there, getting there. Family comes first. Gimme a break.)

Bonesteel and Wells: A tragedy in Troy

[image error]“Three little children who were playing on the sidewalk near 118th Street and Seventh Avenue Tuesday afternoon jokingly shouted to two women riding in a ten-year-old automobile, ‘Get a horse! Get a horse!’

“A few seconds later they were frantically scrambling from the path of the old machine as apparently out of control, it plunged across the street toward them like a juggernaut.”

“There was a moment of silence and then from the front of the car…came the screams of a child.”

(The Times Record, July 6, 1940, p. 9)

The child was my grandmother’s younger brother, Edward Charles Wells. He was 9. The car was being driven by a friend of the family, and in the front seat next to the driver, teaching her how to drive, was the boy’s grandmother, my great-great grandmother Ethel Bonesteel. During the weekend of July 4th, in 1940, the Troy, New York, newspapers were abuzz with coverage of the incident and the subsequent court case – filed by my great-grandfather, Edward Clark Wells. It must have been a traumatic event in my family’s history.

And yet I did not know about until the year before my grandmother died, in 2015.

When I first discovered that my grandmother had a brother I had never even heard of, I was almost in shock. Was it some sort of terrible family secret?

Well, not much of a secret, since it turned out to be in the news. But it had driven the family apart even further than it had already been at the time.

It turned out that my grandparents’ separation in the early 1950s was only one of several such separations. My grandmother’s parents also got divorced – her mother, my great-grandmother Edith Bonesteel, was in fact married to three men (one of them two times) and lived with at least one more, possibly two. Edward Wells, two generations removed from immigrants from Wales (father) and Germany (mother), was the youngest of seven children. He was only 15 when his father died and 21 when his mother died. He also never knew any of his grandparents, and only two aunts and two uncles were still alive when he was a young child.

I mention this because this pattern of lacking an older generation seems prevalent among the members in my family’s history who experienced divorces, remarriages, and overall had emotional and relationship problems. My paternal grandfather lost both his parents at a young age and had multiple marital issues. My maternal great-grandfather Edward committed adultery when his wife was looking after two small children. At the time (1933) he had a single uncle with whom he had virtually no contact. No parents. No grandparents. No uncles and aunts to lean on. No one. He must have felt groundless.

So he must have placed a great deal of importance on his son Edward as a continuation of his family name. Not enough to stay together with his mother, of course. But maybe he felt guilty. His first marriage ended in divorce thanks to his adultery. At the time of his second second marriage, his kids with Edith Bonesteel (my grandmother Shirley and brother Edward) were staying with his older sister Grace.

And Shirley and Edward were visiting their grandmother Ethel Fones Bonesteel when the accident occurred. During a holiday weekend.

Ethel was teaching her friend, a neighbor, how to drive. She didn’t have a driving teaching license, and her friend didn’t have a learner permit. The newspaper reported the car they were driving was a 1930 model – what company, I don’t know, but it’s a good bet that it was difficult to steer. No “power steering” back then. No plastic. By today’s standards, it would have been a monster.

[image error]As the neighbor made the final turn, she mistook the gas for the brake and plowed right into Edward, Jr., crushing him against a house and breaking one of his legs in half. He cried, “Mama, mama,” before collapsing unconscious. His own grandmother watched this transpire from the front seat.

She flagged down a truck passing by, which took them to the hospital. There, doctors amputated the leg. His own mother donated blood later that evening. But he died that night from shock and loss of blood.

Edward immediately brought charges against his own mother-in-law and her friend. Evidently, he also blamed his ex for having a day job and not watching his son all the time. It was the final break. He never again spoke to his former mother-in-law (my great-great grandmother Ethel Fones Bonesteel) and first wife (my great-grandmother Edith Bonesteel Wells Bailey Matthews). And so the Wells family line left us forever.

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The newspaper articles at the time report that the two women were found negligent and were fined. But no doubt the intense anguish felt was punishment enough. One article comments that both women looked “distraught” in the court, and my great-great-grandmother Ethel had a black eye from the accident (cars back then had no safety belts, so she probably banged her face against the dashboard).

The newspaper seems to make a point of showing how little the two women knew of legal matters. When the driver was told she was guilty of a felony, which might wind up with her in jail, she said, “I don’t know what that word means.”

The article also points out that neither woman had a lawyer present, and the state did not see fit to provide them with one, either. When advised to get a lawyer, Ethel said she didn’t have enough money.

The judge responded, “I suppose it is none of my business, but it is peculiar that people without money can drive cars.”

What a cruel thing to say to a grandmother who killed her own grandson in a car accident. What an insulting thing to say. Demeaning.

The judge couldn’t have known at the time, but he was insulting a woman whose family history dated back to early New York and Rhode Island colonial history – and without whom the history of the United States might have turned out very, very different.

But that’s another story.

In the meantime, my grandmother never saw her father again. Or her brother. Edward Charles Wells was buried separately from his family. Edward, Sr., died two days after Christmas, 1952, just a few months after the birth of his third grandchild…whom he never saw. Edward, Sr., and Edward, Jr., are next to each other now. Edward’s second wife is there. But if you didn’t know the history, you would never guess that my relatives had anything to do with the Wells family.

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What’s in a name? That which we call…

[image error]One thing I have struggled with while uncovering my family’s complicated past is the lack of consistency in naming conventions before the digital age.

In the Information Age, if you type in your name or ID with a single letter missing or out of place, your application gets rejected by whatever online program it is you’re trying to get access to. We all have numbers assigned to us—social security numbers, student numbers, worker numbers, case numbers, credit card numbers, you name it.

The past?

Thhppt. What’s a number? What’s a name? That which we would call a rose…

Nicknames abound. People use nicknames with the census takers. Helen becomes Ellen, Elle, or Emma. Beatrice becomes Betty, Bet, or Ebby. Middle names are used as first names. And then you get names first in Dutch, German, or French that a monolingual English census taker can’t figure out and so writes down what he thinks it sounds like.

Creative name taking. This process worked for both given and family names.

One ancestor, Thomas Bushell, who first came to Troy, New York, in around 1866 (a Famine Irish) is listed as Buschel, Boushel, Bushin, Bushell, and Bushel. His children are listed variously as Bushel, Bushell, Bushnel, Busnel, and Bussel. In fact, his son (William Joseph Bushell/Busnel/Bushnel/Bushnell) had his name changed several times over two decades before settling on Bushnell.

Emma Rescott (William’s wife) was French-Canadian-American; her French-Canadian father Horace Rescott was Morris, or Louis, or Lewis Rasicot, or Rustico, or Rassico, or Racico, or Riscot, or Rascott.

So what’s in a name?

As I’ve already said in a previous post, simply having a family name doesn’t necessarily mean the person is related to another with the same name. My family (“Bushnell”) is not related to Bushnells who made the first submarine (David Bushnell), Bushnell binoculars (David P. Bushnell, David’s descendant), or Atari (Nolan Bushnell, lapsed LDS Church member).

Likewise, first names are maddeningly simple in the past.

My German ancestors called all their sons Johannes or Jacob (the origin of the famous children’s song) and all their daughters Maria; my French ancestors called all their sons Jean, François, or Joseph and all their daughters Marie, and Irish called all their sons John, Thomas, and Joseph and all their daughters Susan and Mary (you can probably sense a religious pattern going on…). Search for “Susan O’Leary” and you’ll find literally thousands of women born at roughly the same time and place.

My Dutch ancestors are even more confusing. They didn’t bother with family names until Napoleon made them choose permanent family names after taking over their country in 1811. Before that, the Dutch simply used their father’s first name (a similar system was used throughout Northern Germanic and Celtic cultures for centuries).

So Jan’s son Willem would be Willem Janz and then William’s son Jan would be Jan Willemz. Trying figuring that out after a couple generations. After they came to the US, many adopted a kind of a surname, but the “van” or “de” doesn’t really help; van just means “from” and de just indicates a profession or characteristic. So everybody from a swampy area is called “van der poel” (Vanderpool) and everybody with blond hair is called “Dewitt” (Dutch wit means white, or blond. So “Wit blond ale” really means “blond blond ale.”)

Still, while the names and dates can drive you crazy, they do show us how people from different language and cultural backgrounds interacted over time as their families “became” American. Misspellings tell us about pronunciation. Naming conventions tell us about customs and family heritage.

Family history gives a window into history. That’s a good reason to be interested in one’s own past. The past: it’s personal!

Four generations of strong women: The paternal-maternal side(s)

[image error]It has been said that men write history but women live it.

In my family, it’s also been the women who were the keepers of family history, the tellers of tales and stories. The saver of old photographs and documents.

Which is why I have this photograph of four generations of women who brought four different families into our lineage. Thank you, Aunt Linda, for saving it. Since they are gone, I have an obligation to tell their stories. Who are they?The baby is my grandmother, Shirley Wells Bushnell Apple, who married twice. She died two years ago just before her 86th birthday, so that places the photo at around May or June 1930.

The woman standing in the center is my great-grandmother, Edith Bonesteel Wells. She eventually remarried twice, but had only two children with her first husband—thankfully, one of which survived to adulthood and became my grandmother. I knew her as Great-Grandma Mathews and had no idea her family name Bonesteel was so old, and so crucial to New York and US history…as I will eventually show in another post.

The woman seated to the left is Ethel Fones Bonesteel, my grandmother’s grandmother. She was involved in a family tragedy with my grandmother’s older brother Edward…who I didn’t even know existed until about five years ago. (Another post late will explore this event, which made my family into minor celebrities across the Capital District in the summer of 1940.)

And finally, the woman holding my grandmother is Delphia Freeman Fones, my great-great-great grandmother, born the year after the Civil War ended. It is through her I can trace my lineage back to the so-called Pilgrim Fathers (actually, several lines go back that far, and farther).

Wells. Bonesteel. Fones. Freeman. Welsh, German, Dutch, English.

All direct ancestors, but none Bushnell or Apple, none representing the patrilineal line. But it’s the women who live history, keep history, and make history. I can’t ignore them; I would miss half of who I am, and half of what made my family who we are.

Next up: The Bonesteels.

Fred Langworthy and Susan O’Leary: Cultural Exiles

[image error]Since I wrote about an ancestor on my father’s side (one of his side’s anyway) from the 1920s, I thought the next story to introduce should be from someone on my mother’s side, from roughly the same time period.

But one generation later. And with a theme of religious intolerance. And possibly related to 19th century Irish-American history.

When I was growing up, I often heard stories about Great-Grandpa Fred. The stories usually ended with “and that’s why he was disinherited.”

As I got older, I wondered about my mother’s maiden name: Langworthy sounded awfully English, yet my mother insisted we were “Irish.” In fact, my father used to tease my mom for being Irish until he found out how much Irish was in his own tree (the Bushels were from County Tipperary, “old English” (sean gall) who turned native).

Also, my mother is a staunch Roman Catholic, like her parents before. Despite the Langworthy name. And her grandparents? Connally, O’Leary, and Lewis. Irish and French Canadian. All Catholic.

All but one. Fred.

Frederick Hiland Langworthy was the youngest of six children, two of whom died before he was born in 1881.

His ancestors were among the first wave of English settlers to what is now Rhode Island and Connecticut; the first Langworthy in the New World was Andrew Langworthy, a Devon native who helped to found Jamestown, Rhode Island, and who, with his wife Rachel Hubbard, was among the first members of the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Baptist Church (more on the Hubbards in a later post!).

The Langworthys were numerous (very numerous) and spread quickly throughout New England and Upstate New York, and eventually to the Midwest. In Upstate, they were among the first farmers in the mountainous township of Thurman, whose eastern part became the hamlet of Warrensburg in 1814. My hometown. Well, one of my hometowns. (We moved three times before I was 12.)

Then, as now, the town (sorry, “hamlet”) called itself the Queen Village of the Adirondacks. It is surrounded by the Hudson River (“the Glen”) to the northwest and the Schroon River to the south and east, making it ideal for mills and other 19th century industry mainstays such as tanning and linen. Also great for camping, hiking, canoeing, fishing, skiing…

And farming? It must have been hard. Brutal winters, and short, hot summers. Poor sandy soil. Loads of maple syrup and cows and horses. (Maple farms and horse ranches abound even today.) Lumber and granite to build New York City.

In 1900, the Langworthys had a farm just to the north of the hamlet, which had just over 2,000 residents (today, this number is about double that). Warrensburg was and still is a popular destination for tourists needing to escape pressures of city life (and polluted air).

One summer day in 1905, Fred delivered fresh vegetables to a camp just outside of town, where he met a tiny (4’10”), wiry woman with a piercing gaze, sharp tongue, utterly assure of herself. He fell in love instantly with her: Susan O’Leary, the youngest daughter of an Irish immigrant and Pennsylvania coal miner, who had relocated to New York City and become first a stenographer, then a house servant / nanny.

She was Catholic. Irish Catholic.

Fred’s Protestant family was furious. His parents forbade him to even see her, let alone think of marriage. He ignored them, and in response his father kicked him out of the family farm, out of the family house, and out of their family entirely. He moved into town with his sister, Leonora Branch, who had become a successful shop proprietor with her husband.

The locals may have had some antipathy toward the Irish. The failed Fenian invasion of Canada (1860s-1880s) was still remembered by the town elders. Despite — or perhaps because of — the presence of local inn owner Patrick Heffron, an Irish immigrant who had gained grudging respect as a Civil War veteran, anti-Irish sentiment was strong among certain community members.

The recently established Saint Cecelia’s Catholic church (1875) with an Irish priest probably didn’t help matters. Nationally, the Haymarket Riots (1886) and rising numbers of immigrants sparked anti-immigration laws in the 1880s and 1890s. A Scottish anarchist was deported in October 1903 from New York City, and the Immigrant Act of 1903 was re-enacted at the end of June three years later.

Anti-Catholic, anti-Chinese, and anti-Irish sentiment was high in the small, isolated mountain community!

Or so the Langworthys may have felt, encouraged by pride in their family’s long history in the town. A nephew of Fred’s eventually became minister at the Methodist Church, but there is no other evidence that the family or other townsfolk were actually anti-Catholic or anti-immigrant. Only speculation.

What’s true is that Fred’s oldest brother Melvin tried to patch things up by inviting Fred back to the farm once the parents died in 1908. But then Fred married Susan in 1910, and he was exiled once again. Interestingly, he didn’t convert. As this was generally expected before Vatican II, his refusal to convert must have caused tensions within the family. In order for my grandfather Allison Mark to be baptised, the local pastor insisted that he be called “Mark,” as his first name was unacceptable to the Church. No doubt Fred thought the two names were a reasonable compromise. My grandfather was called “Al” by friends and family for the rest of his life, but at Confirmation and when he got engaged and married, the Church called him Mark A.

At any rate, by 1915, Fred’s brothers William and Lewis were sniping at Susan and Al on a nearly daily basis, despite their own marital problems (Lewis’s wife left him, and though he refused to grant a divorce, she remarried anyway). Or because of their problems? Or because they were staying in the inn run by a clearly successful Irish Catholic, and they harbored a grudge…

Whatever the reasons, they verbally abused Susan so much that she laid down an ultimatum to Fred: We leave together, or I leave with Al for New York.

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Possible location of Fred’s final “truck farm” in Pittstown, New York, across the Hoosick River from his day job at the axe-making factory.

They left together. First east to Hudson Falls, where Fred worked at a paper mill (and likely contracted the illness that eventually killed him). Then south to Johnsonville, from where Al would take the train every day to the city of Troy — becoming the first in our family’s history to attend and graduate from high school.

But Catholic High was private, and expensive. And no doubt the daily train trip wasn’t cheap, either.

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Postcard from 1915 showing Union Station in Johnsonville, New York, on the Boston & Maine (B&M) line…running down south to Troy, where my father’s great-grandfather was a flagman. Grandpa Al was probably using this train the day his future son-in-law’s great-grandfather was run over.

Fred tried to start his own farm while continuing to work at local mills. But the strain was too much. He died at the young age of 57, in the midst of the Great Depression, with Al having just graduated and forced to wander town to town searching for jobs.

When he did find one, at the Cluett, Peabody, & Company Arrow Shirt factory in Troy “the Collar City,” mother and son relocated to Troy, so that Al could be closer to his job. There, he met the woman who would eventually become his wife, and my grandmother.

But not until a lengthy and eventful stay in US Army in Italy. But that’s another post…or novel…if I dare…

[image error]We have no photos of Fred, and only a single postcard. Alone among his family, he enjoyed reading the news and wrote many letters to Susan. Sadly, their correspondence burned with all the rest of their possessions in two house fires in the 1920s.

We moved to the town in 1984. I had no idea my grandfather had been born there, in a house on River Street (bottom right of the top photo). Even now, in 2018, the Langworthys in Warrensburg generally refuse to acknowledge our shared family history. Fred has disappeared from their family trees, and memories. We are still the outsiders.

Because Fred left.

His lonely grave site, isolated in Pittstown, New York, miles away from that of any other relative, gives only his name with the simple inscription:

57y 7m 28d

William Joseph Bush(n)ell and the Switch Engine

[image error]So where to start the family stories?

How about with a working man and the mighty engine that could (kill him)?

Railroad working is on all sides of my family forest. It’s a real shame that the US train system is so terrible. Generations of immigrants and working class folk needed the train for jobs and transportation, but the oil tycoons and the Henry Fords of the automobile industry convinced everybody that real men drive. So the train companies shut down almost all the old lines, especially the ones that ran through the cities.

Like Troy.

The Delaware and Hudson ran trains through Troy up to Montreal and down to New York City (and many other cities in-between) until the 1960s. The main train station in Troy, Union Station, was a beehive of activity until the “urban renewals” of the 1950s tore down the downtown Troy area and sealed off Albany and Troy from the Hudson River by striking the I787 highway straight through the Capital District like a stake in its heart.

It’s only in recent years, in the 21st century, that the cities have begun to heal the wounds it received in those bleak years. So in order to understand why my great-great-grandfather died, you have to have a completely different picture in your mind of what a Troy City street looked like back then.

I live in Japan, which is entirely reliant on trains for public transportation, so I have a much clearer idea of how crowded things were back in 1928, when Trojans used the D&H and the Boston and Maine lines to get to school, work, and play.

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This is not the Ingalls Avenue crossing, but the Adams Street Station in 1929. A series of automated controls were installed after the fateful 1928 season, which saw increasing numbers of pedestrian deaths in a crowded urban landscape.

Now we have automated railroad crossings, operated by complicated computer-control systems, activated when an oncoming train passes over electronic sensors between the tracks. Back in 1928, the crossings were operated by hand.

By my great-great-grandfather’s hand.

It must have been a frigid morning on February the 24th, when he performed his daily duty of escorting gaggles of school children over the Ingalls Avenue railroad crossing. The children were likely headed to School 1, just a few blocks away (this school is now closed and is being turned into apartments in the poorest section of the city).

William Bushell was a flagman at the Ingalls Ave crossing, where he stood for years on end to prevent pedestrians from danger. But the wood slats over the tracks were icy, and just after he successfully guided the children to safety, he slipped and fell over the tracks. Just as a switching engine (like the one depicted above, from B&M in Lowell, MA) rumbled down the line and killed him.

Well, to be more factual, it decapitated him. And also cut off both feet and one hand. Newspaper reports in 1928 were apparently far more gruesome than modern day reports.

He was widely hailed in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Capital District region as a hero, who sacrificed himself so that children could live. But really he was just doing his job, the job that flagmen and flag women do every day even today.

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Incorrectly gives his name as “Busnell.” This also is part of family history—the utter lack of name consistency…

The scary thing is that the Troy Times the next day noted that his death was the “third accident of this kind…within the last two weeks,” despite that fact that Wllm was “one of the most careful employees of the Boston and Maine.”

The next year, New York dedicated $300 million ($4.2 billion in 2016 money) to upgrading railroad safety features to prevent such accidents…but the money dried up. And soon after the Great Depression hit.

And the Bushell (which was soon to be renamed Bushnell) family had no bread winner.

Growing up without a father figure set a trend for my family in the 20th century. And it started with William Bushell/Bushnell and his son Thomas.

More on the Bushell/Bushnells coming soon…

The Apple Falls Far from the Tree

[image error]My family name is Apple, but I am not related to anyone by that name.

Well, legally, yes. And by marriage. But genealogically no. So the old adage is definitely NOT true. At least not genetically.

My paternal grandfather Larry Apple died in 2013, but my other paternal grandfather died ten years prior in 2003, and my maternal grandfather died twenty years before that, in 1983.

My three grandfathers.

In elementary school, I had no idea that Grandpa Larry, my Dad’s Dad, wasn’t my “birth” grandfather. To me, though, he was all I knew. I still think of him as my “real” grandfather, because he and his family were what I knew growing up and to whom I remained close after I got married and had children of my own. I still think of myself as an Apple. Despite—or maybe because of—all the crap I had to put up as a kid over the name.

Apple. Apple sauce. Apple pie. Corey apple. Johnny Appleseed. Rotten apple. Apple for the teacher. Aaaaaaaaappplle.

When, at the age of 11, I first met my Grandpa Tom, it was confusing—not the least since his children at the time were younger than me, and yet technically my aunt and uncle. Thomas Nelson Bushnell had been married three times and possibly had children with at least two unmarried mistresses, as well. I wound up with something like a dozen aunts and uncles spread across the Capital District. (And yes, I need to use his middle name. There are at least four Thomas Bushnells in this family forest…)

My mom’s family was much easier to figure out. At least, I thought so at the time. At least, there were just the two uncles. Oh, and the extended family. The Irish. And the great-grandfather who was disinherited for marrying a Catholic. But more on that in a later post.

My Dad is the one who started the family history investigations. This is no doubt due to his being told at the age of 17 that his father wasn’t his “real” father. Of course, it was traumatic. Divorce is much more common these days than in 1949. Still, not telling a kid that he’s adopted is close to child abuse. I had to wonder what on earth the relatives were thinking.

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My grandmother, still using her married name from the first husband when engaged to the second in 1951. Confusing!

Now I know. But I also have to be careful how I write about it. Family is family. Adopted, divorced and remarried, separated or together again. Family is still family.

After my paternal grandmother passed away last year, I decided to start my own project on family history. All three of my granddads were in the military during WWII. (As it turned out, nearly every male member of both sides—all three sides?—of the family tree were involved in the military at that time; probably so was everybody else’s family, around the world.) My granddads were different ages, and came from very different family backgrounds. I wanted to write about them while relatives’ memories were still fresh.

Memories are precious. They can also confuse, exaggerate, and be difficult to change even with ample evidence.

And contradicting memories can also cause pain and anger. Which is why I stopped the project. My mother’s memories of her father (my grandfather) weren’t borne out by the evidence I was finding. My paternal grandfather’s sexual behavior still alienates family members, and many of them refused to talk to me about the family past. Other relatives have become serious Trumpelstiltskins, and I really don’t want to get too close to that particular brand of familial insanity.

So at any rate, the stories I’ll be publishing will be restricted to relatives long since passed away, in an attempt not to offend those still living. I’ll try to only write about direct ancestors, since of course there are of loads of distant cousins and so forth (for example, King George V and FDR, among others).

Because, as it turns out, there are way more than three families involved in my tree/forest. That’s history!

Here are some of the names that will appear (eventually). I’ll probably make this post into a static page to link to so readers can keep track of all of them.

Bennett

Bonesteel

Bushell / Bushnell

Connally

Fones

Hubbard

Langworthy

Leary / O’Leary

MacCallum

North

Nurse

Oldham

Simmons

Twiss

Wells

West

Winthrop

Finding the Tree in the Family Forest

[image error]While visiting Montreal and Upstate New York for summer vacation, my family were greeted by an unhappy surprise.

My mother has Stage 4 cancer.

I’ve been spending the past two to three years researching my ancestry (at, you guessed it, ancestry.com) and I had already hoped to talk with my mother about her memories of our Irish and French Canadian heritage.

I’d already managed to find quite bit online via various databases, both public and private. But there’s no substitute for family stories. And now I have a time limit.

I’ve found quite a few interesting stories in our family tree, which really is much more like a forest, including the Irish, Welsh, English, Scottish, French, Quebecois, German, and possibly Jewish, Native American, and Polish.

So over the next few months I’ll slowly be posting some of the more interesting individual stories from my family’s (families’) histories. Some are more mundane than others. Some are so good that movies should be made from them.

Hope you look forward to reading them!

(And, no, I haven’t stopped the science fiction novel. Work proceeds apace!)