Semi-Update 5/31/2015

    Well, before too much time goes by, and I slide back into not blogging, I should do my best to bring you up to date with our life in Georgetown.  It has been an endless series of doctor's visits since we have been here, but we seem to be making headway.  In my last blog, I left you with us struggling to determine just what to do with Barbara's wrist fracture unable to heal after her first surgery.  We had found a confident and well credentialed young gun surgeon, who seems to have a good understanding of the problems Barbara faced in getting her wrist repaired, and we had nearly decided to do it.  After several days of discussion, some with him and some by ourselves, a go decision was made.

    We let him select the hospital as he wanted to operate with his regular team, and expected to discharge her that afternoon.  The morning we went for surgery, things got off to a poor start.  We were to be at the hospital at 6:00 AM for a surgery that would start at 8:00 AM.  We were, but we seemed to be the only ones who were.  No one at the day surgery reception desk, and no one except other patients waiting.  Finally a nurse came out and called someone's name.  They left, but shortly another nurse came and the process was repeated.  

    After about fifteen minutes of this we were down to two couples, two patients I assumed.  A nurse came out and called the other couple, and asked if we were scheduled for surgery.  We told her yes, and she suggested we follow her along and she would get us to the right place.  The other patient was in  a wheelchair, which the nurse wheeled at a very brisk pace, and left us behind.  Finally she turned a corner and when we got there, she was nowhere in sight.  I finally saw a sign pointing to Pre-Op and we went in the door.  We were immediately stopped by another nurse asking who we were, and when we identified ourselves she kindly showed us to the pre-op cubicle where we belonged.

    During the flurry of activity taking vital signs and the like, we noticed a needle on the floor.  We told the nurse and she seemed unconcerned.  Since Barbara, by now had only hospital socks on, I kicked the needle over under a chair.  Two more comments to the staff went with no attention.  I thought sharps were supposed to be carefully attended in a hospital environment!  

    Shortly Barbara's surgeon came in and covered some more details and options with us.  The possibility of total fusion was discussed and discarded by Barbara as she felt it would be the end of her career as an artist.  Partial fusion was discussed and after careful consideration of the outcomes, she approved if there was no other alternative.  The surgeon estimated the surgery to be 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

     I went to the surgical waiting area and tried to read, but after the first hour I gave that up as a bad job.  After about three hours, the surgeon called me from the OR and said he was down to his last real option short of partial fusion.  He was hopeful, but less than optimistic he said.  After about another hour and a half, he said in a second call that partial fusion was the required course open to him.  I approved and he said it should be about 2 more hours and he would see me after the surgery.  Finally, after a total of eight and a half hours he came out and said the delay was because they had discovered that near the end of the surgery, Barbara had been burned by a hot instrument, and she had second to third degree burns on her finger and the back of her hand.  Moreover, because she had been on a block for so long, he wanted her to stay in the hospital overnight for pain management by the anesthesiologists and to observe her burns and have them treated by the wound team.

    Since much of the hospital was being renovated, it would take a while to get Barbara and appropriate room, so I went to get coffee.  When I got back to surgical waiting room, they gave me Barbara's room number and suggested I go up there to wait for her.  When I got to her room, I was surprised to find the Director of Nursing waiting for me.  That struck me as strange.  She tried to pass this off as a visit to a spouse who must be stressed, but it soon became clear she was there to apologize for the burn (and likely to assess my frame of mind regarding legalities).  

    I must say, the room looked like the hospital was in bad need of rehabilitation, as there were areas of the walls where paint was off, many water stains on the ceiling and the like.  More on this later.  After some time she seemed ill at ease and I wondered why.  Finally, after a bit more than a half hour, Barbara arrived attended by two nurses.  Although still partially sedated, it was clear she was in significant distress.  She had a “pain ball” which is a sort of portable, self sustaining nerve block device, injecting pain killers directly into the nerve site involved in the surgery.  She commented several times that her arm felt like a log attached to her.  Now the Director of Nursing's presence  took on a somewhat different view.  She was definitely there to try to protect the hospital’s interests.

    Since it was very late in the day (probably 7:30 PM) and we had been on the move since about 5:00 AM, we decided I should go home and get some sleep and return early the next morning.  Since traffic in the morning rush hour would be very bad, we agreed I would be back by about 9:00 AM.

    When I entered her room in the morning, I found my wife crying uncontrollably.  Let me say right here that Barbara is no sissy.  She has had both physical and emotional pain for much of her life and she bears it very well.  When I could finally understand her, I got that she had not had her pain managed for most of the night.  Now recall that the reason she was admitted to the hospital, post surgery was for pain management.  She said she had asked for pain control in the middle of the night, and they gave her a Vicodin and made her wait an hour and then gave her a second one.  No call to the anesthesiologist was made until about 6:00 AM and he came at once and reset her “pain ball”.  Relief was just starting to take effect at around 9:00 AM.  

    While sitting in the room waiting for the pain to subside, Barbara pointed out to me the unclean conditions in the room.  I asked for the Director of Nursing to come up and she did so promptly.  I pointed out several cleanliness deficiencies to her and she agreed and called for the head of housekeeping.

    The anesthesiologist counselled repeatedly it was best to not let the pain get ahead of you.  The anesthesiologists decided that her pain ball tube had moved away from the nerve that needed the medication and they should remove it and install a new one.  This required them to move her to pre-op and they did so and accomplished the procedure without consequence, and said she could be discharged.

     We came home to our apartment and she was on a great deal of pain medication.  The next few days were spent running for prescriptions, getting meals, cleaning up, and trying to keep her comfortable.  Dr. MacKay checked in frequently by telephone to follow her progress and after about seven days we went to the office for him to check on her. He was concerned about the continuing pain, but wanted her to start trying to move her fingers, which were still terribly swollen. He was also concerned about the burns on her hand.  They were weeping and inflamed and looked very sore. She did not complain too much about the burns, but much more about the surgical site. What we didn’t realize then was that her course of healing would be long and trying and most importantly emotionally difficult.

  For several weeks the pain in the burned fingers was a serious problem, but finally it yielded to the ointments we were applying daily. While that sounds easy, with her cast nearly covering the burn site, it was a challenging exercise. In addition to the burn, the swelling from the surgery caused extensive pain. She had a rod about ¼” in diameter coming out between her index and middle finger on her left hand, and two wires which were crossed in her wrist in order to hold everything together while healing took place.  Of course, with three holes in her skin where these existed, infection was a constant threat.  As you can imagine she was nearly constantly uncomfortable and a good night’s sleep was a treasured occurrance.  In addition to these other items, substantial pain medications were involved and so that was another complicating factor.  It seemed that trips to the pharmacy for drugs and potions was a daily occurrance.

  After several follow up appointments with the surgeon, it was beginning to become clear that there was little, if any healing going on. In an attempt to improve that situation, Dr. MacKay wanted her to wear a bone growth stimulator ten hours a day.  It is a rather small device, worn over the cast, which supplies small but continuous electromagnetic pulses to the fracture site.  This has been proven to be helpful in stimulating bone growth in about 40-50% of patients.  In the next couple of weeks, he removed first one wire from her wrist, then the other, and finally to rod that was between her index and middle finger.  This gave her some relief of the annoyance and constant concern for bumping them, but did not indicate any real improvement in healing. X-rays and CAT scans were not encouraging with regard to having the fusion heal properly.

During this time, we were asked by the hospital not to take any action against them, but rather to sit with them when Barbara was better and discuss how they could “make it right” with us.

We finally moved in November of 2013, but it was far from ideal!

     Just to continue my record of very infrequent blogging, it is now April of 2014.  I find myself living in an apartment with Barbara in Georgetown, Texas.  I can only say, we should have discovered Texas before! While we were both enamoured of North Carolina, still there were things that nagged us about that decision.  We found a house we loved and while we were considering an offer before our Maine house sold, the house was sold, we understood for less than we were contemplating offering for it. As if that weren't enough to discourage us about North Carolina, the following spring, it was wracked by tornadoes.  While Hendersonville was not badly damaged, it did give us pause.

     Since Barbara is a southwesterner, she was longing for much more sun than is normal along the mountainous part of the east, and wanted to try some more southwestern location.  We talked some of Arizona, but that seemed to connected to drug problems for us.  The artistic parts of the state beckoned to her and we did some research, but decided crime and drugs had a foothold and it lost some of it's appeal.  Her father was a Texan and had always talked fondly of the state, so we decided to give it a look and it entered our considerations.  The conservative government appealed to me as did the somewhat better economy, and we added it to our list to look at.  Our first significant visit took us to San Antonio and a bit further north to Kerrville, where her Mom and Dad had a small condo.  We spent three or four nights with them and looked at the Kerrville area, but it seemed a bit limiting to us.  We also found San Antonio both hot and humid for our taste.  One day during the visit we went over to Austin and found nice weather and  pleasant hills, but it seemed to much of a city for what we really wanted.

      Back in Maine, the housing market was not conducive to selling, so we decided to stay another winter.  It turned out to be one of substantial snow and lots of shoveling and snow blowing, so that added fuel to the fire to move.  In the spring of 2013, our next door neighbors decided to leave the area, as she was offered a job at the Cleveland Clinic.  They succeeded in selling in about three months, so we listed again and reduced our price some.  I was not happy about that, but Barbara said, "Don, you are 77 and you just can't keep up with this place anymore and it is time to admit it".  Tough words, but I needed to hear them, I guess.  We were having quite a bit of traffic and lots of interest, but no real offers.  Finally, one afternoon, our agent had a call from a couple who had just sold their house in Massachusetts and were pretty familiar with Maine and had seen the listing for our house.  We had made contact with a realtor in Austin while we were there and called her.  She, of course, flooded us with listings to look at.  That same day, the couple from MA came to look at our house and spent nearly two hours looking at everything. We got a call later that afternoon from our agent and he told us they were at his office writing a full cash offer on our house!  While it was less than the listing price, it was a good offer and would allow a very quick close, and we could go to Texas or North Carolina that fall, if we chose!  What a dramatic change in our lives this would make if we could make it work.

     When we received the offer it was not quite as much as we had hoped, but it was all cash and they would like a rapid close.  A long evening of decision making followed and we decided it was time to make the jump.  So, we were signing up for lots of decision making in a very short time, and lots of sorting, sifting and disposing of goods and furniture as the closing was scheduled for just over a month!  We were foolish enough to think we could do it.  My first trip downstairs into the office and workshop made me realize just how much work was to be done!  I think I had not yet come to realize how much my abilities had changed since we moved into Tara Lane twelve years before!  But, it wouldn't be long before I came to understand.

    The first big decision was about having an estate sale.  We had always thought they were done as a result of having an estate to settle, but we learned that lots of folks did them as they downsized and prepared to move from one large home to a much smaller one.  Described us to a "T".  But, as we investigated further, we found they were not as easy as they sounded.  Everyone tells you that you hire an auctioneer, and they sell just what you tell them to, and they organize and run the whole thing, including advertising and getting stuff organized to get you the maximum price, and they get a percentage.  Well, not exactly.  There are many more ifs, ands and buts when you dig into the details.  A few years before we had a\participated in a "garage sale" with some friends and neighbors.  It turned out to be a gruelling weekend and there was much less return than we had expected.  Of course, this time we had a lot more attractive stuff to sell (snow blower, chain saw, tractor and trailer, some good furniture, tools, and much more) so maybe a big garage sale was a good start.  We talked about it together, and then with my son and grandsons, and decided to give it a go.

    It turned out that my two grandsons were more than happy to help Grampy, and they were just more help than I could have imagined.  In the process, I learned that my two grandsons had turned into very strong young men and hard workers right under my nose.  I have learned a little bit about accommodating to some of my physical changes and using my head rather than just overpowering things as I used to.  Sam and I were moving a bunch of old magazines out of the basement and into a bagster (a wonderful invention) and had a large, wheeled trash can full to get into the trailer.  I told him we would put the top on the trailer and then pick up the bottom, one on each side and slide it into the trailer.  When we got it out of the basement, he said, "I got this, Grampy", and wrapped his arms around it and picked it up and dropped it into the trailer!  If you can imagine my astonishment, you are very perceptive.

     At the end of these days of physical labor, needless to say, I was bushed and ready for a nap.  But, we were just starting. The next job was deciding what we could pack, getting mover quotes, and all the decision making that goes with it.  As I recall, it was about here that the buyer was having his inspections done and one of them was a survey.  We found, much to our surprise that our driveway and turn around pad were about ten feet on our neighbors property. The buyer was willing to just tear up the drive and continue, but I pointed out how important that feature was when there was lots of snow to plow and find a place for.  So, we worked out a trade with our neighbor to do a land swap, and all would work out.  Then we found that the local planning board had to approve it as we were in a legal subdivision.  Their next meeting was the day after our closing was scheduled.  The buyer was willing to change the closing date, but there were several anxious days about the deal.  We were proceeding with this whole process when Barbara's Dad had to have a dual bypass surgery.  Of course, she had to pack up and go to Maryland to help through that crisis.  Fortunately, all went quite well and she was only gone five days.  I couldn't accomplish a lot with her gone, but did get lots of decisions made about what tools to sell and what to pack, and got several boxes of stuff packed in the office.  I also made some packing progress in my workshop, but not as much as I had hoped.

     When Barbara got back home, we put it in overdrive.  The following weekend was when we were doing the garage sale and Charlie, my son, and Sam, his son, were coming up on Saturday to help with the crowd.  On Saturday morning we placed signs out pointing to our house at all nearby intersections.  We had no one in the first hour, which led to a great deal of distress.  In Maine, those who are constantly on the lookout for garage sales have the reputation of arriving an hour early.  But, it was late in the year for garage sales and we hoped they were just slow getting started.  And, they were!  After they started coming, they never stopped.  We were busy all day and when it started to get darker and we decided to move stuff in the garage and shut the doors for the night, we had trouble accomplishing that.  The next morning, although we had not advertised a second day, we had some come back to try to get what they wanted yesterday, and in a few cases where it was gone, they bought something else.  We cleared nearly twice what we had hoped for and had a few customers during the following week for things that were left.  All in all, it was very successful.  We could now go into overdrive packing!

     I think it was the next Friday, I was in the basement doing some more sorting and packing in the office when I heard Barbara screaming.  I am not too quick anymore, and by the time I got upstairs she was standing in the mud room, and said she had fallen in the garage and broken her wrist.  We got in the car and took her to the York Hospital, where she was X-rayed and the break was confirmed.  She was operated on the following Monday and came home with a surgical splint and lots of pain medication.  What a time for this.  She came out of the surgical splint and was casted a few days later.  Then on Sunday morning she was talking to her Dad who had done well, been in rehab two days and was home.  All of a sudden she said he was talking gibberish, and kept saying he didn't know what was happening.  I suspected a stroke, she hung up after telling him  not to lay down, to sit right still and we were sending help.  We called a nearby lady friend of his and she took charge and got the EMS folks for help.  He had had a stroke.  How lucky Barbara was on the phone with him.

     He was admitted to the hospital and treated for three days, then discharged into rehab and came home with his other daughter taking care of him for about two full weeks before we could get loaded and get to Maryland, where we had planned to stop to be with him for a week on the way to Texas.  We struggled mightily with getting the rest of the packing done, engaging the movers, and finishing the land swap (complete with new surveying, and other legal maneuvers) and finally got out of York (oh yes, in the midst of all this other stuff, we had traded two 2005 vehicles for a 2012 Chevy Equinox) on November 18, 2013.

    The trip to Maryland itself was pretty uneventful, although we arrived late in the evening.  We had let the beginning of the trip slip back by two days to get a little rest before undertaking the drive.  When we arrived in Maryland, we were put up in a friend of Bill’s basement apartment.  The lady was Pat Lansdale, the same one that had gotten the EMT’s on the job.  She had very nice quarters for us, and it afforded us some privacy and some space of our own.  It proved to be much better than camping out at Bill’s and gave us a way to get the occasional break.  Each morning saw the opportunity for coffee and a chat with Pat before facing another day of confusion and activity.  She frequently joined us for dinner in the evening and we came away from that period with a new friend.

    The days were filled with trying to get Bill in a frame of mind to continue his rehabilitation from his stroke, which was a trying task at first.  He didn't like his visiting nurse, nor was he enamoured of his therapist who was trying to help him overcome the aphasia, which was a notable result of his stroke.  But Barbara was able to make him see that if he wanted to improve, he had to use all the resources at his disposal, and he got so he was somewhat more tolerant of the whole situation.  The plan was for us to stay through Thanksgiving and we were all going out to Thanksgiving dinner with Barbara’s sister, Dana and her kids, one of whom, Taylor would be our server at the restaurant where he worked.  But, since the reservations were for eight o’clock, and Bill didn't want to, and shouldn't eat that late, he resisted.  I was unwilling to leave him alone on Thanksgiving Day for dinner, so we scrounged at home and Barbara and Dana went.  I don’t think it was much of a celebration for anybody.

    On the day we were to pack up the car with boxes, suitcases and clothes, Gracie (our much loved Golden/Lab) and head off to Texas and our new apartment from which we would search for our new home, Bill called and said we needed to take him to the hospital.  As it turned out when we got there, he was having another rather serious intestinal bleed.  It was not the first one he had had, nor as serious as the one immediately preceding it, but it was bad enough to get him immediately admitted to the ER and result in two day stay for further testing.  It added yet another week to our delay, since we just couldn’t leave under those circumstances.  After a couple of days in hospital, and completion of more tests, he was discharged and came home.  We did get off the day before he was discharged, and started our drive to Texas.

    Probably the easiest part of the whole moving experience was the drive to Texas!  The weather wasn’t too bad, except for one day when we encountered freezing fog, and we holed up for an unplanned stay on a Sunday, but the loafing and rest were welcome.  We spent six nights on the road, including the extra one, so our road trip to Texas was actually pretty easy.  Of course with Barbara’s wrist in a cast, and the cautions she had about using her wrist, I did most of the driving, but fortunately I can still drive without too much problem.  The last day we were on the road was December 10th and that was the day the ice storm caused so many road problems in the Dallas/Ft Worth area, so we skipped the Interstates there and came down through east Texas from Texarkana.  I have learned from that experience that the roads in Texas are great, and you really don’t need to stay on Interstates if you want to wander.

   Settling into our apartment was not too bad, as we had rented furniture from Cort Furniture for our six months planned in the apartment, and the fact that we were delayed a day from what we expected, our place was all furnished and we moved in our clothes and personal possessions and went to bed.  By the way, if you want to rent furniture, I would suggest you avoid Cort.  They made it very difficult for three months to get our renters insurance accepted and stop charging us an exorbitant rate for insurance on the furniture.  They should be ashamed of their business practices.  My insurance agent told me they were famous for such tricks.

   I rapidly found the necessary doctors for my care and, of course went through all kinds of baseline testing.  I guess I should be glad they were thorough, but it sure took up a lot of time during the first two months.  Getting care for Barbara’s wrist proved more difficult.  We were told when we left Maine, that it was a matter of getting an orthopedic surgeon to take off the cast, and get going with some physical therapy and all should be good.  So, we made an appointment with Texas Orthopedics, a big and well regarded practice here to have the cast removed and X-rays taken.  When that happened we got the surprise of our life, because the screws had pulled out of the plate and more surgery was needed. Fortunately, Barbara was seen by the founder of Texas Orthopedics and she got Barbara an appointment with one of their top hand surgeons.  Unfortunately, we could not see him until after the New Year, so we were back at ground zero as far as insurance was concerned.  We met with Dr. Brandon MacKay on January 3rd, and got lots of bad news.  Her break was much more serious than we had been led to believe in Maine, but he was very well qualified, having been the chief resident in Orthopedics at Bellevue Hospital, and having gone from there to a fellowship in a hand surgery clinic in San Antonio.  He is a brash, young, self confident city kid, just what you would want for a tough surgery!  He spent enough time with us, explaining the problems, and outlining five approaches that the surgery might take.  He told us that diagnostics were very helpful, but a surgeon never really understood the problem until he could get in there and put his eyes on the damage.  One of the possibilities he made us understand, was that a total fusion of the wrist might be the only option that would work, but he would avoid that if anything else had promise.

With just that much assurance, and confidence in his credentials and plan for the surgery, Barbara decided to go ahead. I will continue soon.

Boy, I do have trouble keeping current!

As I write this, it has somehow become 2011 while I wasn't looking. It just seems that I have too little time to write down what is going on in my life. It has been a very busy year with Barbara having a very serious auto accident at the end of 2009, the day before Thanksgiving, as a matter of fact. She was driving our 2003 Audi TT on her way to work, and encountered a Dodge Ram pickup truck in the middle of the road. Fortunately, all the safety systems worked to perfection and both air bags deployed, likely saving her life. She did suffer a broken sternum and contusions to both lungs. It turned out that it was not a simple, nor rapid recovery situation. She was plagued with a prolonged and difficult recovery, involving a diagnosis of COPD (which fortunately turned out NOT to be true), but she did struggle with asthma and recurrent lung infections for nearly a year. During this period, we have decided it is time for us to leave Maine and find a more moderate climate to call home. To explore areas that were candidates, we travelled to North Carolina last summer and explored the state. In two weeks, we covered most of the different locales, from the Raleigh/Durham area to the mountains west of Asheville. Of the areas we visited, we both fell in love with Hendersonville. Our decision was that we would

both like an area with four seasons, little snow, relatively low humidity, and a small town environment that was friendlier and more intimate than a large city.

Our decision was not based simply on her accident, but on my slowly changing health and my desire to do some other things beside spend my time maintaining a house that is bigger than we need during the summer and plowing and shovelling all winter. I still want to have time for my genealogy work, some teaching of research methods, and still lots of reading to do! My experience last winter with sciatica was a big wake up call that this was no longer a good place for us to be in the winter! If you can't plow and shovel in Maine in the winter, you don't belong here.

As I write thisw we have listed our home for sale and have at least one interested buyer. It is our hope that we can conclude a satisfactory sale this summer and make a move to North Carolina this fall. I will write more much sooner than last time!

Can it be a New Year already?

It is hard to believe it is 2010 already. I have been happy to reconnect with James and Judy LAUX during 2009. It has resulted in some significant expansion of the MICHEL/LAUX family tree as they added their spouses, their children and their children's spouses to the tree. In fact they have added enough data that my master file is now out of date and requires work early in 2010. 2009 got away without significant progress being made on my MICHEL line except for improved organization and storage of documents.

Henry (also known as Heinrich) MICHEL (also called MICHAEL during a period from about 1895 until about 1917) continues to prove very elusive so far as his birthplace and his immigration to the United States. My best data suggests he was born in Reichenau, Germany in 1852. This data comes from a passport application filed in March of 1913 for Henry to return to Germany for a visit of up to three months. In that application he attests he was born on August 11, 1855 in Reichenau, Germany. So far, attempts to confirm this data have not been successful. He also claims in this document to have emigrated to the United States on board the "Werra" sailing from Bremen in January of 1883 and residing in Whitesboro, NY from 1883 continuously until 1913. I have been unable to verify any of these facts to date. The good news is that this gives me lots of leads to follow up on during 2010! The data is pretty consitent with other information that I have indicating that he married Anna Barbara YOPS in Ft. Plain, NY on December 31, 1884. This information comes from the Archives and Historical Department of Montgomery County, NY.

One other significant contribution comes from Sandra HOYT, who is the grandaughter of Francis LAUX, my mother's sister. Sandy and her brother (Robert, often called Bobby in the family) and her sister, Diane have all become interested in the family history project and started a HOYT family web site as well. This should provide yet more data for the database I am building as material they have on their site will connect to my data for at least two or three generations back. Progress, although frustratingly slow is being made.

How Time Flies

It is hard to believe that it is 2010 already! I can't say where 2009 went as far as my genealogy work is concerned, but a lot of it went to organizing and storing material properly. It was very good to reconnect with James and Judy as a result of James asking for a family reunion photo. We are using GENI and MyHeritage to stay in touch with each other and expand our family tree data, which has grown notably as they have added their children and the spouses to the tree. In fact, that has caused the tree to grow so rapidly that I have not yet added all of the new data to my master database, a pressing job for 2010!

I have not really made any progress of note on my grandfather, Henry (sometimes called Heinrich) MICHEL (also known for a brief period as MICHAEL during his life) . My best bet for his place of birth remains Reichenau (on the shores of Lake Constance) in germany, near the Swiss border. This is somewhat consistent with family lore which is "near Strasbourg". I am not quite sure that 120 miles was "close" in the 1850's, but maybe in Europe the roads were good enough by then to make it considered close

New progress

Since my Mom was one of thirteen children and my Dad was one of five, I have lots of cousins and have lost track of many of them over the years. My Mom only had one sibling that was younger than she and that was her brother, Edward. He had three children, Richard, Judy and James. As luck would have it I have lost track of Judy and James over the years, but recently I received an email from James asking about a family reunion picture that was taken about 1945. I was lucky to still have a copy, so my sister and I identified all of the people in it, and sent it along to him. I asked if he was in touch with his older sister, Jusy and he was. In fact, she was at his house attending his daughter's wedding.
The result is that I have established contact with both of them and they have contributed substantial information to the family history data. It includes all of their children and their spouses, as well as some others. Occasionally, after many years, a contact is made that adds significantly to the history of the family.

An Update

Well, it has been sometime since I wrote here and I do have some more to report on my family research project. I have discovered that my grandfather, Henry, returned to Europe for a visit, apparently to his family in March, 1913. In his application for a passport, he states that he was born on August 11, 1855 in Reichenau, Germany. He further states that he emigrated to the United States on the ship "Werra" arriving from Bremmen in January of 1883. He also says he has lived in Whitesboro, NY from 1883 until 1913 and was naturalized at The County Court of Oneida on October 18, 1888. This information has not yet been further verified. It appears that there are actually four places in Germany that at that time may have been known as Reichenau.

I have also reconnected with two of my cousins that I have not seen for several years and that has added considerably to my family history. But more of that later!