My g-grandfather and his siblings were left orphans about 1874, the children were parceled out to various relatives and friends. His sister Julia, was 15 and the year was 1879 when an article appeared in the local newspaper saying that she had filed "bastardry" charges against a male person in the community. The newspaper made light of it and remarked "the young man went west to grow up with the country". It did not take much investigation to find that the "young" man was actually her uncle, married to her mother's sister and that he was not a young man, but was in fact, 48 years old and had raped his 15 year old niece. Julia gave birth, kept her child, worked as a maid and eventually worked for a family taking care of a houseful of children and their mother until her death. She eventually married the widowed father and together raised his children, her illegitimate child and several children of their own. Her child born of the rape grew up under the name of her adopted father, she married and had a family. I do not think she ever really knew of the circumstances of her conception. When I started researching the family in 1990 I tried to make connections with various members of her descendents, I believe that I found a direct connection, and that family did indeed want the genealogy of Julia's ancestors. To my dismay, this line of family eventually denied any relationship to Julia's child. So in spite of the fact that she had descended from a rather well connected and famous line, my hunt for her descendants has ended without any sharing of living descendants. They however, do have the ancestry and descendants of the rest of the family so maybe someday someone will be able to overlook this child's sad beginning. Julia unburdened herself to her own children before her death, and her own grandchild, Ruth Childers Seamands wrote an historically correct but genealogically fictional book called "Cast a Long Shadow" several years ago detailing her grandmothers saga. Ruth and I became reacquainted after a friend of the family read the book and called me to relate that she thought this was my "missing" family member. It was indeed, and I called Ruth to talk, in the conversation, I related to Ruth the names and descendants of Julia's real, not fictional siblings and Ruth in turn, revealed the story of her wonderful family that had grown from Julia and her husband. We ar all quite proud of Julia and her ability to overcome her uncle's criminal behavior. Julia's grandmother was Elizabeth Clemens King, a first cousin of Samuel Clemens, grandfather of his namesake Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain. Julia's own descendants are of an equally fine line of people who started their lives in Pope and Williamson Counties. Coincidently, Ruth Seamands book is still available through the Williamson Co. Historical Society if anyone is interested.