Nettie’s Story
My family was surprised when I told them that my great-grandmother, Florence Roberts, had three siblings. They only knew of one, her older brother Walter. The explanation for one of these missing siblings is easy to understand. Florence’s younger brother Schuyler was born in 1895 and died as a child between 1900 and 1905. In that era, the fact that his family didn’t talk about his death is unremarkable. The mystery of what happened to Florence’s older sister, however, is a much more complicated story.
The Motherlode of Erismans
I have an unusual last name. For much of my life, I never met anyone named Erisman to whom I wasn’t closely related, close enough that we could easily calculate what flavor of cousin we were. Some years back, however, while visiting Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on a business trip, I was suddenly inundated by Erismans—a colleague’s child’s kindergarten teacher, a local car dealership, the high school’s star quarterback smiling from a billboard. There were Erismans everywhere, even on a road sign. I had, I concluded, found the motherlode of Erismans.
The Phalanstery is Man's True Home
My four times great-grandfather Abner Hixon Longley, the son of Thomas Longley, was born in Mason County, Kentucky, in 1796 and went on to live a rather remarkable life.
Juneteenth
This isn’t a story about my ancestors, but it is one worth telling. Growing up in Texas, I was certainly aware of Juneteenth, which has only been a national holiday since 2021 but has been a Texas state holiday since 1980. To me, as a young person, the holiday wasn’t much different from Memorial Day or Independence Day, one of those summer holidays marked by parades and cook-outs and sometimes fireworks.