While waiting at the doctor’s today, I was reading a short story by Haruki Murakami. It was about reading and doing without sleep. The gist of the story was about the value of reading BIG books. This set me to thinking how I wanted to read a BIG book. So after the minor “surgery” at the doctor’s, I rewarded myself in my usual way with a trip to nearby Barnes & Noble and a search for a BIG book. What about Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet? Not in stock. J.G. Farrell’s books – not in stock. So I wandered in the “stacks” and bingo – there was Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. I wasn’t really looking for that one but it certainly was BIG. Phew. About 1000 pages and HEAVY. About the Civil War and the South. Not really what I wanted but it has been more than 60 years since I read it. My sister Nan and I both loved it! So that’s my choice.

I almost didn’t solve it today. All day I kept puzzling over it. I finally clicked on the 6th try. Phew!

As a young man, my paternal grandfather Charles Dana Miller, fought in the Civil War, North vs South. Serving in an Ohio Regiment, my grandfather was on the Union side. He survived the War and shortly afterward, in 1865, he married and had 2 children. Sadly his young wife died following the birth of the 2nd child. As I understand it, his parents helped in looking after the grandchildren. Years passed and eventually he sought additional help with the children, and this is where Mary Murdock, a young girl living in Crown Point New York, was asked to come out to Ohio to be a housekeeper for Charles. (I suspect that she and her family were known to Charles and maybe even related.)

Well, the marriage took place in November 1882 in Crown Point New York between Charles Dana Miller and Mary Murdock. They are my grandparents. My father was born to them in 1891.

But what of the daughter and son born to my grandfather Charles Dana Miller and his first wife Lucy Gilman Jewett. The daughter remained in the Newark area. She married and had several children. To date I have not identified that line of step relations.

No it is the infant son, Charles Dion Miller, born 1867, whose path I have traced. When he grew up he married a woman named Maud Parr. That family had a farm in Iowa. The descendants in turn gravitated to Colorado.

..to be continued

This photo was taken on our terrace in Kenya in the early 1990’s. I can’t for the life of me recall doing the puzzles, I found the photo recently among some memorabilia. I wish I could find the whole album I made of puzzles we completed. It was a big phase of doing jigsaws, some of which I can remember vividly.