List of Nines--Part 8—My Most Interesting Family Members

I couldn’t resist this list, but have included both living relatives and those I have found while researching my family tree.

1. My Aunt Glenna. She is the one who had the cherry orchards when I was younger. Many times I also went to work at the farmers market with them. She is fun, crazy and in her mid 80s shows few signs of slowing down
2. Armenus Gilbert. My big genealogy breakthrough. While much of my fathers side had been done already, not much was know on my mother’s side. My discovery of Armenus, my great-great-grandfather and my Civil War vet was an exciting moment. He was the middle of three generations who lived to age 90 as well.
3. Mary Sitts. A distant cousin told me about her. She is rather famous, and there are a couple books about her as well as much on the internet. As a child she was captured by Indians in the Upper New York area and taken to Canada where she was raised by a childless couple. While there she learned the art of being a medicine mother from her adopted mother. Eventually she was ransomed, married the son of her rescuer and then eloped with my ancestor. Scandals are the breath of life to genealogists.
4. Gerald Ford. Yup, the president is in my family, we just haven’t been able to make the verified connection. At least through adoption. But as a child, he was at the same Ford family reunions as my grandma.
5. James Henry Samis. This is another great-great-grandmother on Mom’s side. He died in 1899 after losing a leg when hopping a train to find a job.
6. Gilbert Samis, not an actual ancestor, more of a double cousin, his parents being the siblings of both my great-grandpa and great-grandma. He was in the Spanish American War before dying near the end of WWI in France. He was the first fallen soldier of Osceola County in the Great War. Again I found many clippings about him online.
7. I can’t leave out my Older son. He is in a class by himself. Pure farmer. I have long been know as “B—‘s Mom”. And yes, it has been confirmed, he has sold the famous party bus.
8. Barring a grandchild of my own someday, my great-nephew Luke has to make the list. This accommodating child always wears what I knit him.
9. My Grandma Allen. She tried to teach me to crochet. She introduced me to Little Women and Little Men. She encouraged my creativity. And she survived my dad and his siblings.