Anyone who knows me at all, knows how important family is in my world.  It is not just about those in my immediate circle.  I appreciate all family – mine and everyone else’s too.

I also appreciate being a student of family.  I am always taken with how our ancestors came to be together from generations before.

I will tell a story – and one that only recently received added clarification (and that part is a story for another day).

My grandfather came to this country as a teenager with his entire family – minus his father.  The family photo from what must be the early 1900’s is proof.  My grandfather as a young man, three siblings (including the aunt I am pretty sure I was named for) and his mother together with probably 30 others. 

They were boarding the boat to travel across the ocean to meet my great grandfather who had most likely come ahead to set up a base for the family.    

If we have the story right, when the family arrived in NY they were suddenly alone.  My great grandfather was nowhere to be found in the city.    Turns out, he had been earning money selling wares from a pushcart on the lower east side of NYC and wound up in the wrong spot at the wrong time, killed by a bullet meant for someone else.  My father kept the newspaper article recounting the incident.

Do you have a family story to tell?