The Last Aha...

Uncle Sam and Company

...or "Go tell it on the Mountain"

Our dashing boy in blue, Uncle Sam, and his wife, Catherine

(Author's note: The next few blog posts will be portrayals of individuals who have crossed or otherwise contributed to my own family's past in some unusual or different way. If you have no interest in this, what can I say other than "you're probably barking up the wrong tree." Aw, come on, that was frickin funny. Peace out.)

As always, unapologetically unedited.

Part I.

I have often lamented the lack of colorful or better-than-average people amongst the branches of my family tree. In truth, though, that's kind of a bunch of b.s---. There really are plenty of cool folks if you just take a closer look. But that's me. I'm usually always bitching about something, especially about anything among Ye Olde Branches.

Sometimes, though, it takes circling back around to see them. It isn't that you missed them on the first go-around, but more that you got busy looking for that kinda ridiculous connection to Taylor Swift or some dumb one to Megan Markle that caused you to misremember some of the amazing ordinary lives. However, when you do circle back, the digital breadcrumbs just might lead you to some of the perhaps not-so-familiar names of the people who've surrounded our ancestral pathway into this world.

This week, I have gone back to that tree to find a few of those I might have misremembered to tell you about. The truth, too, is that I've grown a bit weary looking in the family trees of those too busy to notice.

It's good to come home to these familiar faces and to celebrate our own.

In doing so, I have let "the algorithm" guide me where it would, with the first place it "stopped" being at the probate record for the father of my great-grandmother Mary Kraus Ogle. This was all well and good, and while Mary Karus Ogle is only distantly related biologically and "blood-wise" to me through her mother Electa, and via Mayflower passenger Richard Warren, still her family (especially in this instance) has always been my own.

It seemed natural that the algorithm should return me here. It seemed natural that, in looking for remarkable lives that I should simply "go home."

This is my long-winded way of saying that the first (or rather the next) guy, "the algo," brought me back to was "Uncle Sam." (Kinda makes sense when "returning home," right?) Yes, to Samuel Truman Kelsey (1832-1910), the dashing fellow "in blue" pictured above. Yes, "Uncle Sam," who was my great-grandmother's great-uncle. Sam was her grandmother's brother. See? Now, no complaining about too many branches in the tree.

Above: This newspaper clipping is my favorite.

Uncle Sam - whose mother was called "the Belle of the Mohawk."

You see, Uncle Sam isn't really all that far away. :) In fact, I'd wager to say that my grandmother Katheryn Ogle Record might have even sat on his lap. It would have been quite the occasion in 1916 Kansas for Uncle Sam to come to town.

Now I don't know where to begin with Sam. Of course, his alleged acquaintanceship with the young Abraham Lincoln is what family legends are made of. While this acquaintanceship is unverified, and falls under the genealogical category of "Yeah, sure..," still, it's a great way to start off in taking a look at Uncle Sam. I guess Sam knew Lincoln back in their younger days in Illinois. Regardless of whether it's true or not, one wonders at the circumstances that would have brought about such a meeting.

Did they go to the same mercantile? Hitch horses to the same watering trough? Talk legal briefs and sweet potatoes?

Even putting all that Abraham Lincoln stuff aside, Sam was quite a dude.

Uncle Sam was a horticulturist. He grew trees and nuts and berries, all in an attempt to refine and promote better crops. He was a college professor in Kansas, where he taught nineteenth-century horticultural sciences. He was nomadic, moving from New York to Illinois to Kansas and to North Carolina before returning to New York again. He passed away in Boston, but managed to get buried in Baltimore. I guess Baltimore was in between them all.

He co-founded towns in places like Highlands and Linville, North Carolina, and helped preserve great patches of forest in Appalachia. In short, I guess you could say that Uncle Sam kind of embodied what I like to think of as the best of us.

Yeah, then there was that whole business with the mountain. You see, Uncle Sam owned his own mountain. Owning one's own mountain has to be a unique feature in any family tree. Yes, Sam bought 16,000 acres in North Carolina encompassing his own mountain. A place called "Grandfather Mountain."

Yeah, that was Sam's.