My nephews were here. They are hilarious. And they found the Butcher’s secret stash of ice cream sandwiches he’d hidden in the freezer behind a frozen pizza! My god, I now see why people have children. They find all the cool shit in the house someone is trying to hide.
Luckily for the Butcher, they didn’t eat all of the ice cream sandwiches, though I’m sure they’d have been happy to try.
The Phillipses are gearing up for my visit next week. My uncle is cleaning out the basement to try to decide what family heirlooms he wants to give to me and also whether I have accounted for all the dead people he might know. Handily enough, he seems to be having some real estate transactions with the grandchild or great grandchild of Barlow Phillips, who is Great-grandpa Frank’s brother.
But so I thought I’d make him up a map of where all the Phillipses lived in Michigan (though I petered out on the generations my grandpa’s age and younger). You can see it here, if you for some reason want to know where to avoid the gene pool or perhaps, if you like grouchy people, where to jump in with the seducings. But as I was making little markers for each Phillips wherever they lived, I ran into little William Phillips, living with the Ernesbergers (Emily is Luke and Patience’s daughter). He was their six year old boarder, living there with their six year old son.
So, clearly, Emily didn’t just happen to rent out a room to a six year old boy with her maiden name. That boy is someone’s kid. But whose? Is it Emily’s brother, William, who may or may not have had a wife named Hannah before he settled down with Phoebe Artman? Emily’s sister Almira would appear to be off the suspect list, since she was dead. Juliette Phillips would seem out of the running, because she married John Ransom in 1870. But shoot, any number of the grandkids could be William’s parent.
William, I know you’re one of us. I just don’t know how. (Still, if I had to put money down, I’d put it on Brother William, who was born in 1850, but didn’t start having kids until 1881. Seems like there was time for scandal or even an actual marriage between the time he turned 18 and the time he married the wife I know about with certainty.)
Edited to add: Well, that link didn’t work. Let’s try this one.
Edited again to add: Well, that worked even worse. Now you see why I didn’t bother to make a Google map for the second batch of ghost stories last year.
Tiny Cat Pants 