Egad, I almost ghosted this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, themed “Spirits”. I thought I had done this a week ago, but it turns out I only did so in my mind.
Initially I had hoped to take the theme in a more libatious direction and share an anecdote involving jenever, a Dutch liquor that is the forefather of gin. Unfortunately, once I began to write it, it became apparent that it was a rather boo-ring story.
Thus I have turned to this well-worn oft-repeated anecdote about my great great grandfather, John A. Nelson (1854-1942), that I’ve seen innumerable times over the last thirty years. It’s attributed to his son Seth Henry Nelson (my mother’s great uncle, who I wrote about on Week 8 in 2022). While I’ve seen countless copies of it, I’ve never seen anything its provenance or that could be described as the original.
The tale relates to John’s encounter with two malevolent spirts and a third that may have been his protector. I’ll share it as written:
Needless to say, I don’t believe a word of it. Its greatest value may be that it tells me something I otherwise wouldn’t have known about John: he spent a year in Oregon working on the railroad. The only question is when.
The anecdote indicates that John was in Oregon for over a year shortly after his marriage to my great great grandmother, Ella Elizabeth Thomas, which occurred on January 9, 1879. Their first child, Maria (“Mimie”), was born in March 1880, so John did not leave for Oregon any earlier than June or July 1879. John and Ella’s second child, Ella, was born more than two years after Mimie, in June 1882. If John was away from home for more than a year shortly after marrying Ella, it could have occurred anywhere between late summer 1979 and the summer of 1881. However, without further evidence, I don’t have a ghost of a chance of figuring it out.
A Deck of Ancestors 