able to find in my family thru my up-and-down
genealogy pursuits over the past 25 years,
where I've spent what's seemed like entire
months at both The National Archives
and the Local History and Genealogy
Reading Room of the Library of Congress
is a paternal ancestor who was a spy for
Gen. George Washington in the Continental
Army.
(See http://www.archives.gov/,
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/,
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/,
http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/,
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html ,
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/ )
Over twenty years previously, in 1755,
he'd been an enlisted man under a young
Washington when they marched en masse
from Alexandria to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh)
with British Gen. Edward Braddock on his
ill-fated expedition to capture that strategic
French fort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Braddock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
(One of the Washington, D.C. Metrorail
stations in Old Town Alexandria is actually
called Braddock Road.
http://transit.schuminweb.com/transit/wmata/blue-line.php?station=C12
It's the Metro station that's only a few
hundred feet from the HQ of PBS.
Here in South Florida. as we all know,
they'd name the station after a living politician!)
After the Revolutionary War ended
and my ancestor manged to avoid
being captured and having a British
Army noose wrapped around his neck,
for his efforts, he received some land
way out in the Ohio Territories,
about an hour from current-day
Pittsburgh, .
Which is why my paternal ancestors
and family have lived continuously
in Jefferson County, Ohio, right off
the Ohio River, since before it
became a state.
And me, I was born at the Lackland
Air Force Base hospital in San Antonio,
where my mother worked right next door,
directly under the Base Commander at
Kelly AFB, where my father was in the
Flight Surgeon's Office.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/kelly.htm
http://www.mysanantonio.com/military
They each saw President and
Mrs. Kennedy the day before he was
killed, when Air Force One flew into
Kelly and went thru the official receiving
line.
Our family has a photograph of them
at the base that day that I've never seen
published anywhere else in the myriad
books and film footage of their time in
Texas. One day...
Happy Veteran's Day!
United we stand...
