Finally some good news, even if it interests only me
.
I do genealogy as a hobby. On my father's side, I've been trying to prove for a couple of years that my great-grandfather was taken in or adopted by his aunt and uncle after his mother died. I had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that would impress the Perry Mason's of genealogy.
I knew the uncle was a Quaker, so for shits and giggles I wrote the Quaker group in Sparta, Ontario where they were from. I wasn't expecting anything, but a woman wrote back saying she was a cousin of some kind and that my hypothesis was right! Yay! She emailed me a memoir of his family, written by the uncle himself, pictures of his still-standing house, and other family pictures. That's genealogy for you; years of tedium with minutes of joy.
I still don't know what happened to his parents, or when, or where they were. But I hope that will come, too.
What hit me in the gut was that my dad and granddad were both named after this uncle, named Samuel. His something-great niece told me that he took in so many children from the town that he was known as "Uncle Sammy", whether related or not. My son is a Samuel as well-and I call him Sammy.
I'm honored to have Uncle Sammy even indirectly in my line.