Kathy: That's exactly where the plot starts to thicken. Christian was first cousin to Abigail and Elizabeth. It is on that big Woodbury/ Trask genealogy I posted. The Herricks and Kettels and Batcheldors and Raymonds were also immediate relatives. It rather looks as though Christian's extended family, beginning with her husband and possibly Hale's suspicions (though I don't know when Hale became suspicious) blamed Sarah Bishop for Christian's death, and for every subsequent death that happened in that family. I had thought that Elizabeth (Woodbury) Balch was simply a nasty relative who couldn't abide the fact that Sarah Bishop was abused by her husband, but the fact that Christian had such a severe case of depression suggests the possibility of mental imbalance in other members of her clan. Mood and anxiety disorders are strongly genetic (about 65% genetic component), some forms, like the manic depression that runs in my family, carry an 80% risk if you inherit the gene(s)! I have a list of currently known genes for unipolar depression and anxiety disorders on my web site, genes have also been found for manic depression but the condition is so strongly genetic that the medical community hasn't debated the fact in some time. I have mild manic depression, so does my mother, and so did her mother before her. People in most families with manic depression vary completely in how severely they are affected, and often some family members are unusually productive and successful. In fact, people with manic depressive temperament are exactly the sort of people the "Old Planters", such as the Balches and I think the Woodbury's and possibly the Trasks, and I think the Dodges, were. Intelligent, intense, stubborn, resourceful, and strongly motivated, with alot of drive and initiative. Like many genetic diseases, manic depression has a strong adaptive component. In fact, this facet of manic depression accounts for why it is the only form of mental illness disproportionately found in the upper social classes. I traced the manic depression down my Raymond line to where it crossed with a group of families who founded Sudbury. Serious mood and anxiety disorders run in the descendents of the members of the Balch family that Tabitha Balch who married Paul Raymond belonged to. She was the daughter of Freeborn brother to Benjamin who married Elizabeth Woodbury. I suspect that the Capt William Raymond line may always have had a tendency to mood disorders; why else would William marry a member of the Bishop family who quite clearly had mood disorders? Manic depression, particularly, is prone to masking behind not only other mental health problems and substance abuse, but certain lifestyles and occupations. Military leadership is one of them; these decisive, intense and action oriented people often make good military leaders, and William Raymond certainly fit that mold. I have vaguely noticed that the Dodges, too, seemed to have an awful tendency to mental illness atleast where they crossed with my Balch and Raymond lines which they did continually. The Dodges were extremely closely related to the Woodbury's. These genes actually get perpetuated in families less by the probability of any one gene being inherited by particular offspring, than by the overwhelming tendency of people who have them to marry other people who have them. My family history is a full chain of people with manic depression or family histories, as of a parent with manic depression marrying each other. Because some people with moderately severe manic depression get repeated depressions but not manias, it can take a very long time, generations even, to get a proper diagnosis! Christian may have committed suicide the first time she had severe depression, and clearly she and those around her thought she had a spiritual problem and if she had had milder "spiritual crises" previously we wouldn't likely be told about it, so we cannot know exactly what was wrong with her. People with mild manic depression have a real tendency to go on benders. For instance, one day when I was 32, I called my mother up and excitedly told her I'd talked to two distant cousins on the phone who my parents had found. I asked them for genealogical information. My mother took half a second to start screaming violently. I didn't have her permission to call my cousins! I messed up her's and my father's carefully worked out arrangements. This is FATHER'S family! BUTT OUT!!! At that time I didn't know that my parents' lifelong abuse of me and their failure to treat me as if I did in fact belong to their family was due to the fact that both of them have mental illness, so I said, OK, I WILL!!, hung up, and never spoke to either of them again. I also got heartsick ,and worried what the relatives would think about the family split, and gave up the genealogy. Over the intervening nine years, my mother's story grew. ALL of my father's relatives got angry at him and stopped talking to him,the story went, and I was responsible for all of this, because of whatever (it was rather vague, there were three things I was supposed to have done) alienated them. In particular, I was responsible for a bizarre fight my father had with his first cousin who I had never found or talked to. I hadn't been in touch with a single one of these people including my godparents with whom we were close in the intervening nine years. I called up all of my father's assorted family, and asked what was going on. I got one response from all of them. "Why, I haven't heard from your father in a LONG time, and I would LOVE to!" My parents are shy, antisocial people who have little to do with people. My father withdraws into his chair in the corner of the dining room and pretends he has relationships with people, and expects them to maintain that idea by sending him letters at intervals. They didn't hear from him, so they thought he wasn't interested! Noone was angry at him, and I had nothing to do with it. I go on benders too, usually shorter ones like running frantically around the grocery store looking for the bag of nuts that was in the bottom of one of my bags, where I couldn't find it when I frantically searched three times (picture what that search looked like), and screaming at the store staff ("I WANT MY MONEY BACK NOW!!!"). The ideas that underlie these bouts often literally could have come from outer space, for all there is any real way to explain how I came up with it. It usually takes me from half a day to a couple of days to realize I lost my mind. My mother isn't capable of realizing that because she won't admit that anything is wrong with her mind. She develops ideas that people wronged or tiffed her, and they turn into what in a former time would have been a full scale blood feud. Her mother was the same way. My great grandmother was hospitalized. I'm particularly prone to this sort of thing under stress. In every case where a Trask/ Woodbury developed this very aggressive and obsessive sort of irrational, intense hatred toward Sarah Bishop, he or she had just lost a spouse or a child. Yours, Dora Did Abigail and Elizabeth WOODBURY have a sister named Christian (Woodbury) TRASK? Kathy Buffington Willett [email protected] _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com