I posted the query about Joseph Solomon Lechner, because a friend and I were trying to determine if there was a connection between her Lechner family and mine. We could not find one. Old George Lechner came over a hundred years earlier than her family. She did send me a picture of her father and her aunt's fingures and they were quite bent. I did not think any more about it until this morning. I looked at my own hands and these fingers are starting to bow towards my thumbs. I am 61. Does this mean we are cousins? If so how do you fit on the Lechner family tree? The thing that I noticed when researching the line of old George Lechner in the few generation I was able to track before they left the York/Adams Co. area, was the amount of early male deaths. At the time of his death all of George's sons were dead. Of his grandsons, that I have tracked, only one grandson lived past 50, dying about age 54 and one great grandson who lived into his 70's and at least one of that man's sons had died in early manhood. I have always wondered if there was some genetic factor or if they were the victims of the hard life and poor medicine of the late 1700 and early 1800's. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] for any additional information.

Sounds like arthritis.......and although it is genetic, it is not restricted to one lineage..... Stormy