Plugging away

Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t.

I’d been told this was my great-grandfather Joshua, but I have my doubts. In other photos, he had impressively big hands. Maybe this was just one of the places he worked.

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Would we like them?

Our ancestors, that is. Let’s be candid, as much pride as I claim in my Quaker and Dunker/Brethren ancestors, I doubt we’d get along. I’ve come to believe there was no golden age in our past. For all the harmony in Peace Church traditions, there were also all those restrictions, for one thing. It was a long list. Then there were peculiarities, such as the chewing tobacco common among Brethren men. Could we even understand them as they spoke? I dunno, but it looks like communicating would be a challenge. And their lives, no doubt about it, were demanding, modest, rural, even difficult – a world apart from mine.

~*~

So what about yours? What qualities do you admire in the ancestors you’ve “met” through your research? And which ones repel you? Anybody you’d especially like to sit down with if you could do time-travel? Any you’d especially avoid?