Jenn,

It can be quite an adventure! I learned most of my family's dirt, at least on my mother's side, when I was in grade school. There weren't many cousins my age, so very often when we would go on vacation I had no one to hang with. Because our cottage was the one my grandparents built, my aunts would congregate there to remember the old days. I would sit on the top step of stairs, next to the window, and if I was real quiet, they would forget I was there. Pretty soon they would drop their guard and the conversation would swing around to some scandel or other. Even today, my older siblings and cousins are amazed at how much more I know about the family skeletons than they! Especially since they still think I should be sitting at the kids table and therefore somehow unworthy of possessing such information

DABell -

Small world, eh? Ulysses S. Grant, eh? Well, we just might be related - by adoption. My great grandmother was one of the children on the Orphan Train, a train that came west from New York with orphans from New York orphanages. (This is a part of history that not all people know about!) She was adopted by a member of Ulysses S. Grant's family. My mother was named after Julia.