One Woman's Voice continued

I published the book, and soon after found an account, of my own mother, that adds quite a bit to it.

The whole publishing thing is hard, and it involved fixing a few errors, including the front cover, which had the wrong date on it. So I have that fixed. There's the right date now. There are no blank pages or little typos.

But my mom's account really has to be chewed on for a while. There were apparently a few things that were passed down through the family; some are probably not true, but nevertheless they deserve full research. Why did I not have my own mom's account? It seemed to be in some papers that were not with the genealogy ones. So I really don't know why i hadn't seen it.

Mom says that, according to word passed down from her mother, Elizabeth 1) dropped out of school for lack of funds; 2) her request to make a speech at the college happened in her freshman year and there were actually two years, because she requested it again the next year; 3) her father at one point ran off with the Oneida Community and his name was not to be spoken in the house (this I would infer to be the house of Jessie and Elizabeth's mother, after she got old and ended up there in Indiana); and 4) John had an older son who had already grown up when she came into the picture.

I have already researched #4 a little and found nothing, but it's not really what I expect to find or not that matters. After mulling it over I've decided that I change a little of my understanding based on the family gossip and I really have to integrate it into the text somehow. Things like #4 are hard to prove wrong but it makes me wonder if I really even should say it. With #3, if he was with the Oneida Community it seems it would have to have been before they went to Michigan, maybe much more - but then did her mom split up with him or what? Or was that just not possible? I can see her ending up in Indiana bitter for any reason and maybe that got mixed up with any Oneida Community gossip. That gossip I had always assumed applied to one of many uncles, who all lived in the area at the time of the community, and any of them could have done it. Apparently mom checked and they had no record of Joseph, her dad, joining them.

So I will mull it over and decide when to rewrite. It may take a while, and will require a new index I'm sure.