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Much as I love and honor the surname of the family into which I was adopted, I found my father, and his parents (my Beloved grandparents) oddly reticient about ancestral history.  My father especially disparaged my early attempts to explore his family's history, although he did finance a two-day visit to Newport Rhode Island, a city founded by his ancestors.

When I inquired about my father's great- (and my great great grandmother), Amy, whose daughter had married into our family and became my Grandfather's mother (along with his twelve sibs) and my father's grandmother, I was told that she passed away when my father was six, and that, subsequently, he knew little of her.  Because of her then very small---the word, I guess, would be petite---he called her "Little Grandma," and, when, as a child, he spent his whole summers on his grandparents farm, where she also lived, he had contact with her . . . until he was six.

I did some research on her, and I uncovered what some might call an unsavory aspect of her history, but which, to me, also led to one of the most splendid examples of bravery I have ever encountered in my family.

Amy Jane Kirby was raised on a farm in Indiana, and, at the age of fifteen, ran away from that farm.  I do not know how she acquired the money for her train ticket, but she was able to travel as far east as New York City.  Once arrived there, she had no employable skills; yet, she was said to be tremendously beautiful and her small stature would have made her very attractive.  (I learned this, from studying the Ripper's fifth victim, who, as well as being beautiful, was also small of stature, an aspect which brought her---Mary Kelley---quite a bit of popularity as what we could now, euphemistically call, an "outcall girl.")  "Little Grandma," who was then fifteen years old in 1872, was hired by a brothel in the City and became very popular among the clients---for her beauty, her small stature, and her underage adolescence (apparently, they were not as careful about that sort of thing as we are now).  However, in 1871, Little Grandma became pregnant, with the daughter she would subsequently name Lucinda (who, when of age, would give birth to my Grandfather and his twelve other sibs).  She named the father---Michael Adams---on Lucinda's birth certificate.  Family history suggests that she subsequently removed herself from the brothel and its clientele, including Mr. Adams, after Lucinda was born.  Apparently, she was only able to purchase a train ticket that brought her to Ohio, and not Indiana (if her family even would have welcomed her back), to Miami County.  Subsequently, the son of one of the County's rich men (who had built several mills---grist and lumber---on the numerous creeks in that County), who subsequently raised her and adopted Lucinda has his child.

Swerve now over to my Grandfather's grandfather (and I will not dignify that colossal horse's ass by affixing the term "great great" to him).  He was a preacher, said to be so meanspirited that no church would call him to pastor, and he had to rent a vacant lot and placed his own folding chairs in order to preach to some kind of audience.  (I have a photograph of him, taken in the early years of the twentieth century, in which he glares menacingly at the camera.)  He expected---actually demanded---that his son, my Great Grandfather (one of thirteen shelf clocks was given to me by my father; when I was adopted, the ticking of that shelf clock---which had a small pendulum; and which no longer works---helped me to sleep) obtain a theological education and become both a preacher and a called pastor.  My Great Grandfather, however, preferred to farm; and he added, to the transgression of refusing his father's choice of career for him, the even worse transgression of courting and marrying the daughter of a former whore.  My Great Grandparents must have been very happy together---as they brought thirteen children into this world (in the days before radio, television, and internet, they had to make their own fun), and they made for a very happy home for their children and grandchildren; so much so that my father loved to spend his summers, from first to last day, with them on their farm.  He remembered the clocks---one of which I have, as I said above---chiming together at the same time, and that his Grandmother always kept candy dishes full of the most delicious candy, which my Father was not at all hesitant to consume.  (This reminds me of my early childhood, before first grade, when at my own Grandparents' home for holiday meals, I always stole olives from the relish tray in the kitchen before the table had been laid.  Although my Grandmother always pretended to shoo me away from the relish tray, she always kept it on a low counter within my reach, and always restocked it immediately; and then I would make another dash into the kitchen, inhale the fragrance, from her stove, of the turkey or ham that she was cooking, and then grab another handful of olives.)  My Father said that Little Grandma was very petite in old age, and also retained some semblance of the good looks which had accompanied her to New York City, and had so attracted her husband, who had raised her child as his own.

Now, here is the moral quandry, and if you have a suggestion how I should view this, please feel free to make a comment.

About five years ago, during a marvelously beautiful Autumn, I visited some gravesites associated with my family.  One of Piqua's cemeteries has a very large, even imposing, masuoleaum in which contains an entire Coddington room, in which repose the Astronomer, members of his branch of the family, and my distant cousin Modjeska, who died some months prior to her eighth birthday, in 1909.  I also visited a much less luxurious cemetery, where I found Little Grandma's tombstone.  My Father, a road surveyor who had a very good mind for numbers (and who often did his own reductions of the elevation numbers that were a routine part of road surveys, rather than simply reporting them to the draftsmen for reduction; I was told, by people who had worked with, or been trained by my father, that he brough an artist's exquisite touch to the transit which, even as a crew supervisor, he operated himself, rather than delegating it, as his peers did, to the senior member of his crew; he never repeated a measurement, and never turned an angle twice to double check himself; I have driven on roads that he surveyed prior to their construction, and I always feel safest on them), said that Little Grandma passed away when he was six years old, and that is why he could not tell me much about her.

Amy Kirby Brelsford, adolescent whore and, subequently, wealthy man's spouse, and my Great-Great Grandmother through my Grandfather and his Mother, passed away on October 4, 1940, at the age of eighty-three.  In that same year, on January 21, my Father turned sixteen years old.  When my Father, with that great mind for numbers told me that Little Grandma had passed away when he was six, he was at the height of his career as a surveyor.  He did not, and would not have, mistaken his age at her death, fourteen, for six years old.

How do I reconcile this?

Starward