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- #81
I'm getting rather confused working our family connections and hope that somebody might say "that's simple". If that's the case then can you please provide the answer to this:
What relation is my father's great, great uncle to me? Is he a great, great, great cousin?
I ask because I am currently reading a book of letters by Theodore Bost which were published under the title of A Frontier Family in Minnesota. Theodore emigrated to America in 1851 and the book tells of his experiences as he travels west before setting up home at Chanhassen (near Minneapolis) in 1857 where he starts to clear the land by himself, although with a little help from other new land owners.
I love this paragraph from a letter dated February 21, 1857 to his father in France and thought I would share it with you.
Dearest Father,
To give you some idea of how much I can endure, I’ll tell you that the “shanty” where I am now living is almost exactly as good as the open air. The holes are so enormous that I have given up trying to close them. (I’m speaking about my pre-emption shanty and not the house where I formerly lived.) Two weeks ago, we had a cold snap four degrees colder than the freezing point of mercury. Poking my nose out of my blankets in the middle of the night, I could feel snow falling on my face. Thinking that the weather had turned warmer, I went back to sleep. The next morning, I saw that what I had taken for snow was only my own breath that had turned into frost and fallen in my face when I rolled over in my bed. I got up and tried to light the fire, but the wood was so I couldn’t get it to burn and was obliged to run and take shelter with the Maxwells to keep from freezing. Several days later there was a thaw , and when I went home to my own place in the evening I found my bed covered in water, but I crawled in just the same and awoke the next morning feeling fine but wet from head to foot.
What relation is my father's great, great uncle to me? Is he a great, great, great cousin?
I ask because I am currently reading a book of letters by Theodore Bost which were published under the title of A Frontier Family in Minnesota. Theodore emigrated to America in 1851 and the book tells of his experiences as he travels west before setting up home at Chanhassen (near Minneapolis) in 1857 where he starts to clear the land by himself, although with a little help from other new land owners.
I love this paragraph from a letter dated February 21, 1857 to his father in France and thought I would share it with you.
Dearest Father,
To give you some idea of how much I can endure, I’ll tell you that the “shanty” where I am now living is almost exactly as good as the open air. The holes are so enormous that I have given up trying to close them. (I’m speaking about my pre-emption shanty and not the house where I formerly lived.) Two weeks ago, we had a cold snap four degrees colder than the freezing point of mercury. Poking my nose out of my blankets in the middle of the night, I could feel snow falling on my face. Thinking that the weather had turned warmer, I went back to sleep. The next morning, I saw that what I had taken for snow was only my own breath that had turned into frost and fallen in my face when I rolled over in my bed. I got up and tried to light the fire, but the wood was so I couldn’t get it to burn and was obliged to run and take shelter with the Maxwells to keep from freezing. Several days later there was a thaw , and when I went home to my own place in the evening I found my bed covered in water, but I crawled in just the same and awoke the next morning feeling fine but wet from head to foot.
