Autobiographical Sketch

Begun about 9 years ago. This has been preserved as an "Essay" on my Google Drive in an unedited form - now it is time to give it some polish but first, I'll leave it here for my paid subscribers!

INTRODUCTION

Somewhere within a few miles of this spot, a man settled his young family after moving up from the tidewater of Virginia in the late 18th century. He’d pass away at the age of about 80 in 1844, having received a pension for 10 years for his service in the American Revolution, including participation in the Battle of Yorktown. One of his sons would become a millwright and farmer and his grandson was a school teacher nearby. His great-grandson opened a hardware store in Orange, Virginia and passed away just two years and a few days before I came onto the scene in the next county down from the birthplace of the Revolutionary War veteran - the great-grandson of his great-grandson. 

I’m grateful to be able to tell my story now thanks to all these and my many other ancestors having been a part of this world seen in this photograph. To me, it represents stability being both among these trees and the family trees reaching back into history. Having reached a point of inner stability reflected in the world I inhabit, it is time to look back through memory to some of the events that have forged me into the individual I am today. So much of it seemed so pointless... but was it? 

The story began in a drive along I-64 leading down to Williamsburg on Christmas Day of 2013. My wife and I were talking, and - as often happens on these drives - I was reminiscing about my life. The road was straight but my memory meandered, sweeping back and forth across the years between 1963 and the present moment, and sometimes leaping further back; into my ancestry, which - thanks to having a grandmother who was a "Magna Carta Dame" - stretches back into the time of legend. 

"So much of it seems so pointless," I remarked, and Lynn laughed, saying "You should make that the title of your memoir."