Geneology

 

 

From: Oxsan
Date: 05 Aug 2001
Time: 11:45:54

Some weeks ago while surfing genealogically around the web I idly posted a small note on the Shipley Family Genealogical Forum Board to the effect that Sterling David Shipley was my great great grandfather (great grandmother Dennis' father) and that his daughter Mary Ann had married William A Dennis and moved to Merit Texas back about 1870. Only a day or two ago I got an email from a woman named Debbi Parker whose great great grandfather was named Owen C. Dennis who also lived in Merit Texas in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Since then we have kept up a very intense interchange via email which has conclusively proven that her great great grandfather Owen was a brother of my great grandfather William A. All of this is prologue to the fact that the parents of both Owen and William A. were James Dennis and Mathilda Green(e). Now I am trying to prove that Mathilda Green(e)'s father was Confederate General Martin E. Green of fame in the Battle of Vicksburg. He was from Mathilda's hometown which was Marshfield Missouri and was just the right age to be her father. Frank has promised to do some computer crawling also to try to establish that. Be nice to claim at least one General in the Civil War even if he was on the wrong side and only a Brigadier to boot.

I am also reading a super book which every one of you should read called How To Know When Your Tired by Reg Theriault. It is the life story of a man who had only a year or two at Berkeley then decided that he would rather be a common laborer and earn his living as essentially a "beast of burden". This decision was based primarily on the fact that he preferred the feeling of independence of the laborer who refuses to put the job above other considerations of life; partly because he considers the personality of the common laborer to be head and shoulders above the rich and privileged and the academics; and partly because he felt it was intrinsically more honest to "earn" your living by labor than "learn" your living as a professional. He became a longshoreman - a literal beast of burden for seventeen years - then a whole series of backbreaking jobs. He has a lot to say about the philosophy of the "Working class" and says that he has never regretted going the route he went. He is married and has three children. The book was published in 1995 and I would guess from his picture on the cover that he was fifty-ish. It is a delightful book.

Roger Hamilton has had his catheterization and Dr. Loebstein found that he needed no bypasses but that the left ventricle valve needed considerable repair. Dr Khalafi, who did my bypasses is going to perform the surgery on 8-15-01. Roger's surgery will be true "open heart" surgery which mine was not. Roger also has some trouble with the blood flow in the carotid artery on one side of his neck--I was not aware that there were valves in the carotid--but Roger said they are going to do some tests twixt now and 15 August to see what is needed for this problem.

Oppressively hot here and it robs me of all my ambitions and normal "work vigor" for which I am noted.