Shortly after Susan and I were married, my grandmother shared a short list of names with us that was the beginnings of our efforts at developing a family tree. On that scrap of paper was the name of William Wesley Caldwell, her father.
William, pictured at the right was born in 1847 and served in the Civil War from 1861 to 1865. If you do the math, he enlisted at age 14! I assumed that he was, of course, a war hero. After doing some research at the National Archives in Washington, DC, I am still convinced that he was, but I'm having a hard time putting a positive spin on the fact that he was a corporal - three times!
I took leave of my senses about 5 years ago, and ran for the State Legislature in Illinois. The voters were smarter than I thought, and they elected the right person - it wasn't me. But, in the heady days after I sent out press releases to the various newspapers in Chicago and the suburbs, I was called to the East Coast on business. The very first reporter that called me following up on my candidacy, managed to track me down in a cemetery in Hartford, CT. We had followed the family tree to several of the founders of that city now buried in the center of town. The reporter was fascinated with the prospects of a great human interest story. While we were talking my wife found the grave of Stephen Hosmer who died in 1693 at the age of 48. Unfortunately, when she (the reporter) wrote her story, none of that was included.
After my father passed away in 2002, we found 40-50 letters written between 1837 and 1869 between a group of abolishonists in S.E Ohio. We still haven't figured out if they're related to us, but I am sure that if my mother saved the letters, they had to be from one of her relatives. When one works in genealogy, however, one takes the good with the bad.
Sometimes family histories are not quite what they're supposed to be. My maternal grandmother was quite proud of the family lineage. Even when I was quite young she was teaching us about our famous relatives - three of them to be exact.
The first, which all of us even at that age rejected out of hand, was Henry VIII of England. The genealogy study shows that we aren't related, at least through legitimate heirs. Sad, I could get used to being 795th in the line of succession!
The second one, which we all accepted was Millard Filmore, 13th President of the United States. I didn't know then why I accepted the premise, but I suspect that my logic was along the lines of, " of course we're related to him because who'd make it up? If you were going to make something up, wouldn't you choose someone more important like Pierce or Buchanan?" It turns out that Fillmore was a first cousin of my great, great ...grandfather.
Finally, she pronounced that we were related to the first Surgeon General. Our response was a resounding, "Who cares?" It turns out that she was more right than wrong. Timothy Hosmer was a doctor who was with Washington throughout the Revolutionary War. His older brother Titus was a signer of the Articles of Confederation and a justice of the peace. Their grandfather, Stephen, was one of the founders of Hartford, CT.
The coincidences of history are amazing to me. For example, Timothy Hosmer was the doctor who, following the hanging of Major Andre (of Benedict Arnold fame), pronounced the prisoner dead. Two privates in the American army cut him down. One of them was a Samuel Faulkner. About a hundred years later or so, in October of 1870, a Hosmer clan member married a Faulkner, and produced a few years later one Robert Percy Faulkner, my grandfather and the founder of Graphic Chemical & Ink Company
