Why is it that when we get to a certain age, we are spending so much time taking care of our husbands? I’m thinking of me, and of you too (two) cousins, you know who I’m talking about. Keep your chin up, and keep the faith! We will all get through these trials, one way or another! Like our doc said, on average married men live longer than single men. Now you know why.

I’m taking some time to relax tonight, listen to my Galaxy Player (wow, how long has it been since I’ve just listened to some music), take some time for myself, for once. It has been so long since I’ve just done nothing except listen to some of these songs, wow remember Jefferson Airplane, CCR, Kansas, and maybe you haven’t heard Bonfire, David Gilmour, Ian Moss, ah and remember Jim Croce?

So that’s why the research has been so slow-going lately. Soon, hopefully, I can get back to really spending time on the genealogy again. But for now, some 14 Hands (Sauvignon Blanc, mmhmmm) and some ELO. Yeah you know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself…. 🙂

So there are a few (in)famous Dwiggins names from about 100 years ago, but they are mostly the branches that stayed in Indiana and Ohio, not our branches that ended up in Missouri and Illinois (mostly right across the river from each other).

Some of the (in)famous Dwigginses are:

• Elmer – author who wrote the sci-fi novel “Pharaoh’s Broker: Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidore Werner (Written by Himself)” under the pen name Ellsworth Douglass; but was more famous for defrauding people when selling war bonds (WWI) and spent a few years in a federal prison for it.
• Jay – Elmer’s brother, who was an actor in silent films.
• Robert – Jay and Elmer’s father, who was a lawyer and a state senator in Indiana, and started some banks with his brother Zimri.
• William Addison – type designer; son of a different Zimri Dwiggins.
• Zimri – Robert’s brother; started a series of banks that failed during the “Panic of 1893” and was indicted but never actually convicted or served time.

These Dwigginses had other interests and occupations during their lifetimes, but they were less famous for those enterprises. In comparison, the Missouri/Illinois Dwigginses were boring famers.

Yeah the Dwigginses are getting to be a bit much. The spreadsheet is getting cumbersome, and there are so many names swimming around in my head, I need to set it aside for awhile and work on something else before I go crazy. So… on to Vida Dwiggins’ mother, Mary Ellen McGinnis, born in Ohio, moved to Indiana where she apparently met John Dwiggins and they married, then moved to Missouri. Mary Ellen’s father was born in Maryland, and her mother was born in New Jersey. Those farmers sure got around, and it can be more difficult to trace people who move a lot than people who stay in one place all their lives. So it’s kind of slow going….

Didya miss me? After getting laid off (oh no, age discrimination is totally not a thing) and deciding it would be possible for me to just retire now, things kinda took a sidestep. I was researching Dwiggins (so many Dwiggins families and every last one of them had a son named John), trying to figure out which John was our John, when my laptop got very sick. Data Doctors pronounced it DOA. So Tom gave me his old laptop and I got Legacy installed and my database back from the cloud. But I didn’t have room for all my data files in the same partitition that they were on my old laptop, so all the media links to ancestors’ exhibits are broken. Legacy was able to find over 500 of the files, but there are almost 300 links still broken. So the Dwigginses are on hold until I fix this mess.

On the other hand, someone posted a photo on Find A Grave of the gravestone for Peter Christian Muesebeck and Christine Dabel Muesebeck, so I got the memorials transferred to me. But I haven’t looked at FAG either for awhile, so there is a lot of work to do there too.

Huh. And here I thought retirement would be so relaxing, sitting around all day wondering what I could do to help pass the time. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, I did get my dad’s OMPF of his service in the Marines in WWII, from NARA finally. I sent for it about 5 years ago, and they lost it, which I blogged about before. But after about 5 years I decided to try again, and lo and behold they had apparently found it again and filed it where it was supposed to be. Really interesting to see all the information, almost 100 pages of photocopies. When I have time to organize it all, I will be updating his story page on the website.