Dear Group, Because of the holiday season I was once more reminded of the great genealogy Christmas gift I sent to Caron in Michigan four years ago and I thought it was appropriate to post the story to this list tonight. However, I couldn't find the file on my computer or on my floppy disks and had to resort to the PADUTCH-LIFE list archives to retrieve it. Therefore, is the following. Now, how would you have reacted to a similar a genealogy Christmas gift about your own family? (ignore the old email address). Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 22:53:13 -0400 From: "Vee L. Housman" <housman@prodigy.net> To: PADUTCH-LIFE-L@rootsweb.com Tonight I finally got around to putting together some sort of outline on what I'm supposed to talk about at our local historical society this coming Monday. All that I had put together up until now was the title, "The Internet Discovers the Town of Porter." But with a few hours of concentration I really dug in and it's looking good. The focus of my talk will be about some of the surprises I've given people as a result of their sending me queries through the old NY Genealogy mailing list or contacting me because I'm a volunteer lookup on the Niagara Co., NY GenWeb page. And one of those stories concerns The Great Genealogy Christmas Gift I sent to Caron in Michigan a few days before Christmas, 1996. I had posted my imediate reaction to that "gift" on the old Penna-Dutch list at the time and I thought you might enjoy hearing about it again. Maybe you'll understand why Caron never sent a message to Rootsweb telling about her wonderful experience of how she connected with her family through Rootsweb! I've edited it slightly since then but it pretty much remains the same as I posted it on Dec. 23, 1996. I wrote: Dear Group, Now here's a story that I could certainly "fancy up," but since it just happened, I'll share it with you without any frills. I am a volunteer "Lookup" for Town of Porter, Niagara County, NY, genealogy and yesterday I received a query from Caron in Michigan. She wrote: "I am tring to find out the name of the father of Robert Clapsaddle. Robert was born about 1824; He later married Ellen (Eleanor) Sharp . . ." Well now, I certainly knew who Robert Clapsaddle was and knew I had a fantastic amount of information to send her. So in spite of this busy holiday season, I dug into my files and sent her the Genealogy Christmas Gift of her life! In essence, I told her who Robert's parents were and where they're buried; one more generation back including the grandmother's maiden name and her parents; one more generation further back to Augustinius Klebsadel who was killed in the Battle of Oriskany in the Revolutionary War(!) and his marriage date to Barbara Wentz; and then to the father of Augustinius who was born in Germany. But that wasn't all the information I had to send her. It was about Robert Clapsaddle, himself. In addition to all the details about his family that I found in the census records, including the name of the company that he served with in the Civil War, this is what I sent her (shortened version): "Now, here is where it gets interesting! Apparently Robert and Ellen's daughter Mary married a young man by the name of George Smith. He was apparently somewhat shiftless and worked on Robert's farm where he met Mary. Robert was against the marriage and eventually had to provide food to keep his daughter and her children from starving. Eventually Robert persuaded Mary to leave her husband and move back home. George was furious and intent on revenge. "To make a long story short (I have the whole story), about noon on 10 Jan 1896 George crept up to Robert's house, found him alone reading a newspaper with his back to George. George drew out his revolver and fired one shot. It hit Robert behind his left ear and killed him! "Is that the end of the story? Heavens to Betsy, no! What happened to George has been described as the only "lynching" to ever take place in Niagara County. He eventually was cornered by a mob of local vigilantes (actually just a bunch of the farmers around here) and he died from a bullet to the back of the head. BTW, he apparently was so disliked by everyone in the town that the coroner "determined" that the cause of death was due to suicide!" Oh, I could just imagine how Caron would feel about receiving all that fantastic information! That is, until I checked her webpage which she had mentioned in her message. She hadn't mentioned which of Robert's children she descended from and I was curious to know. When I checked it out, well I was panic-stricken. All I could do was to send her another message as follows [shortened version]. "Oh Caron, "I just checked your homepage and found how you descend from Robert and I'm speechless. I don't know what to say except that I had no idea (OBVIOUSLY!) that George Smith was your ancestor. I just hope that I haven't upset you unduly and if I have, I hope you realize . . . "Oh, Caron, I just don't know what to say or what to think and I can't even imagine what must be going through your mind over what I sent you. I guess my only hope is that you had had some inkling of the situation before this. "I guess my only "defense" in this situation is that I didn't make any of it up. It's all in the records. I can only hope that if you were upset about the George Smith/Robert Clapsaddle situation, that what I had sent you regarding Robert's ancestors outweighed such a negative report. Please let me know that "all's well in Michigan!" All I could think of was that I had FAR-overstepped the bounds of what sort of information I should provide people about their family and that what I had sent her could have been more than just "totally unwelcome" to say the least. It was like someone hearing "I've got some good news for you and some bad news for you. The good news is that I've traced your family back to an ancestor who was in the Revolutionary War AND that I know who murdered Great-Grandpa. The bad news, however, is that it was GRANDPA who killed him and he was lynched by a mob because of it!" And frankly, I still don't know how I would respond to such news, myself! Talk about mixed emotions! This morning, to my great relief, Caron responded with a huge chuckle! She let me know that (1) they had never heard about the murder before, but (2) she was thrilled with the obvious amount of information I have on her Clapsaddle family and is anxious for us to talk further about it. The third is that what I had told her certainly solved the mystery as to why "Grandma Lucille" would never talk about her side of the family! So, all in all, it DID end up being a grand Genealogy Christmas Gift that I sent her. No doubt their Christmas get-together conversation this year will have some extra spice added to it! Now, there's a moral to this story. When you ask someone for information about your family and you receive it BASED ON THE RECORDS, you gets what you asks for! And sometimes it might be more than what you really wanted to know! But once the dust is settled, appreciate your family history for what it really is. Sugar coat it if you must, but for heavens sake, DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER!! Merry Christmas to All! vee