I am new to the Internet, and to the Blanchard list, still trying to figure out how the system works. Imagine my surprise this morning to find the obituary of my aunt, Beatrice Blanchard Freeland, which had just appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle today! She was an amazing woman, whose gracious manner and clear memory of family events will be sorely missed. Heartfelt thanks to Don Fauss for picking up on the story. Perhaps this would be a good time to relate how Bea and I are connected to other Blanchards. We start with Thomas Blanchard, the immigrant, of 1639, who has often been referred to. For several generations our ancestry follows the path quoted by Sherry L. Gould from The History of Canterbury, NH, namely Thomas(1), Samuel(2), Jonathan(3), Benjamin(4), Benjamin(5), Simon(6). According to my family records, Benjamin(5) and Simon(6) lived and died in Peacham, Vermont, as did the next generation, Simon(7), who married Betsey Spencer of Danville, VT. Their son, Phineas Varnum Blanchard left for the California goldfields like so many other sons of Peacham at that time, but he returned to marry the girl next door, Jenny Sargeant, daughter of Asa Sargeant of Peacham. They moved to Osceola, IL, where Phineas started a general store. There their son Milton Eugene was born in 1865. Soon they moved on to San Francisco, where Phineas drove a milk wagon. He was killed by a runaway horse on a return visit to Osceola. His son Milton was then in his senior year at UC Berkeley, where he was studied philosophy and was captain of the 1886 football team. His second son Marion had just graduated from high school. Marion took over driving the family milk wagon, supporting a widowed mother and tubercular sister Lena so Milton could graduate from college. Then Milton drove the milk wagon while Marion went to Berkeley. Ultimately Marion graduated from law school and Milton got a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard. Milton married Henrietta Bayly Blanchard, a San Francisco schoolteacher who later became a concert singer and teacher of voice in San Francisco and Mills College, Oakland. Their daughter Beatrice was born in 1898, son Francis Bayly in 1906 (after the earthquake.) I can't resist telling a Blanchard family story. Peacham VT, where four generations of Blanchards lived for a hundred years, has always been special in my family, with each generation since having returned, either for a year of education at the Peacham Academy or just to sightsee and search for roots. Beatrice Blanchard Freeland often told of a visit she once made to Peacham in the 1930's. She asked everyone she encountered if there were still any Blanchards in Peacham, but alas, no one knew of any. Finally she was referred to one Aunt Mercy Hooker, who (it was said) had once been married to a Blanchard and was now in her extreme old age. "Ah yes", said she, "I remember the Blanchards." (Long pause, while Aunt Mercy thought what to say about them.) Finally she offered these defining words: "Lots of 'em QUEER, but none of 'em CRAZY." (I hasten to add that "queer" meant "peculiar" to Aunt Mercy.) I hope this doesn't shock any Peacham descendants! It delighted our clan, who thought perhaps we could adopt the words as a sort of family motto. I will submit an index record as soon as possible, but this is too long already! --Betsy Blanchard Burr