Found at http://www.dnronline.com/skyline_details.php?AID=5176&sub=Rural%20Pen Ball is the name engraved across the top of a large headstone in a cemetery I pass by often. It never meant anything to me until last week. Now the past haunts me. Not my own life's past, but my antecedents whose DNA and God-knows-what-else I carry. I have many questions. Mom always told me, offering no evidence, our antecedents came over on the Mayflower. As it turns out, that family legend was not far from the truth. I recently contacted a long-lost first cousin who investigated our shared genealogy. David was not lost and neither was I, but we are a scattered family, with little contact beyond our primary relationships. He seemed glad to hear from me and to share the family history. So my many-greats grandfather John Ball did move from Wiltshire, England, to Watertown, the third large settlement in Massachusetts, in 1632. His son, John Ball, married an Elizabeth Peirce, who was deemed to be insane. That explains that. After the death of Elizabeth, John married another Elizabeth. Both were killed in Lancaster, Mass., in an Indian raid that was part of King Phillips War in 1675. I remember learning about that war in history class. In the meantime, my many-greats grandfather William Still moved to Coram, N.Y., and had a family farm there. Both he and another John Ball (the Stills and Balls would eventually merge) fought in the Revolutionary War, Still in the Battle of Long Island, and Ball in Quebec and at Fort Ticonderoga. David had lots of information on the Still family, which is his last name and was my mother's maiden name. Her mother, Florence Still, was a Storms before she married my grandfather. We joke about that change in name. In the meantime, my Dutch Storm (the 's' was added later) ancestors, Dirck and Maria, sailed from Amsterdam in 1662 to New Amsterdam. A few years later, the English captured New Amsterdam and changed the name to New York. David has many stories about Dirck and Maria Storm. Dirck worked as an innkeeper, the town clerk of Brooklyn and Flatbush, the secretary of Orange County, N.J., and was precantor at the Brooklyn and Flatbush Dutch Reformed churches. The couple eventually settled in Sleepy Hollow, a few miles north of the city. One thing that's striking in these pages of genealogy is the number of children these folks had. Dirck and Maria Storm had nine. John and Lydia Ball had 13. In all those hundreds of years, the couple with the fewest children had four. Even though these folks were farmers, clerks and carpenters, with not a whole bunch of money or means, the primal instinct to perpetuate the race was strong. That's the opposite of nowadays, when working couples are (relative to history and the rest of the world) rich, well able to raise a large family, but prefer to remain childless or have a child or two. What happened, Darwin? Your theory has broken down in the wealthiest, healthiest nation in the earth's history. The fittest have no interest in survival, just appearances. My grandmother, Florence Elizabeth Storms, was an only child, born on March 3, 1897. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Smith Storms, died three days later. My grandmother was raised by her aunts, her mother's sisters. I met some of these women, Aunt Mae and Aunt Caroline and others, a few times growing up and at my grandmother's funeral. They all lived upstate, along the Hudson. I have no contact with any of them. David has also included lots of information and stories on the families that married into the Balls. I can see now why he has a "love/hate" relationship with genealogy, because that raises questions about all those who married into the Storms and Stills as well. Curiosity could drive you down every genealogical trail along the path. It's clear he's spent an awful amount of time at this, visiting cemeteries, churches, county seats. So what do I do with all this? In biology class a few years ago, I learned we all carry our mother's mitochondria. It is passed down generation after generation. I wonder, do we inherit other non-physical aspects of our foremothers and forefathers? What about memory? What about the things I think and ways I feel that I do not understand? Is who I am today a result of my own life experiences or is it tied in to my mother's and grandmother's and great-grandmother's and great-great-grandmother's experiences, emotions, decisions? How can I know? Does it matter?

Thanks for the story of the Stills, Balls and Storms, David. It helps express some of the wonder and awe, reverence even, that a consideration of family history tends to awaken in us. The reference to poor, insane Elizabeth Peirce reminds me of one of my own great-uncles whose brief bio reads, "Lost his mind and died in the asylum." Now on to a question for the group: I recently discovered a genealogical compilation entitled "Genealogy of the Fuller Families Descending from Robert Fuller of Salem and Rehoboth, Mass. 1638." The fifty-page book was prepared by Newton Fuller of New London, Connecticut in 1898. A reprint is available from Higginson Book Company of Salem, Massachusetts. If anyone on the list has compared Newton Fuller's record with other sources, I would be curious to know how accurate the book is believed to be. What level of confidence is placed in its data? I ask because, in checking family trees posted on Rootsweb/Ancestry.com, I find some of Newton Fuller's individuals listed but with relationships that differ from those reported in his book. ("Speculative" is an oft-used adjective in my own research, incidentally.) Best regards, Bill Fuller http://members.mato.com/wfuller