Surprising Discovery
Back in the 1940s, my husband had an imposing aunt, Agatha, a compulsive talker who, if she’d rated herself in modern terms from one to ten, would have boasted an eleven. Aunt Agatha was, by her most charitable relatives, dubbed a “character.” Aunt Agatha always prefaced her remarks with a loud open-mouthed intake of air. She used long words and longer sentences to impress firm opinions on her quiet husband, Ralph, and her brothers, one of whom was, said Agatha, a black sheep because he’d gotten a divorce; the other, she attested, was not quite up to snuff because he’d settled for farming instead of a distinguished desk job in the city.Even history was not spared Agnes’s disapproval. One of her uncles, as a young man of limited education, had enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War and had been killed by a sniper’s bullet at the Battle of Chattanooga. Before his death, he wrote a series of detailed letters back to his family. Somehow these letters fell into Aunt Agatha’s critical hands. She read the lot, frowned over their distressing lack of proper grammar, and proceeded to destroy every one of them to the last yellowing, misspelled page—they were not worthy contributions to her family’s reputation.
Given these attitudes, well-known within the clan, it is not hard to picture the Thanksgiving gathering in which Aunt Agatha proclaimed, “I have news for the family.”
It was the usual scene: Uncle Ralph sat at the foot of the long table. Aunt Agatha presided at the head, her foot imperiously perched, ready to stamp the floor button that summoned the maid to bring in or take away one dish after another, served, of course, on elegant Haviland china with heavy matching silver alongside.
The men and children did more eating than talking, confining their remarks to, “Pass the gravy, please.” Conversation generally flowed back and forth among the women. Uncle Ralph sat largely quiet, although someone once heard him, in a rare moment of rebellion, mutter to himself, “More turkeys than one sit at this table.”
But this year, Aunt Agatha waited until the last bits of pumpkin pie had almost disappeared from the plates to make her announcement.
She rapped the table to silence with a spoon against her crystal water glass. “I recall,” she said, “my grandmother told my mother more than once that we had ancestors who fought on the patriotic side of the American Revolution. No one among us, so far as I know, has bothered to check the records. So I am, at present, instigating just such a search. And I hope, next time we gather, to be able to confirm that I and all our related female descendants are qualified to belong to the august Daughters of the American Revolution! Now, shall we adjourn to the living room?”
The usual scattering took place—the women for more family exchanges and gossip, the children up to the attic to play with an elaborate Lionel train set, the men off for a much relished walk and smoke, mostly in silence.
Armed with excited expectations, Aunt Agatha began her paper-trail quest. Back and back she went. Sure enough, here was not just one known ancestor, but two! And, better yet, each name on the military rosters was followed by a tiny “d.” Aunt Agatha could hardly contain her joy. Her Revolutionary forebears had not only fought but died in the service of their country!
Then she received a terrible jolt. In those revealing lists she discovered the “d” stood not for “deceased” but “deserter.”
Aunt Agatha immediately dropped the project. For all her volubility on many subjects, Aunt Agatha never mentioned her ancestral hunt to family or friends again.
And no one at the dinner table next Thanksgiving was tactless enough to bring it up.
Lois Muehl is a retired teacher of English and a long-time freelance writer who boasts no Pulitzers, just reams of fun. After 61 years of marriage, four children, and five grandchildren, her main complaint? “Days are much too short.” Aside from finding her ancestors on the Isle of Man and “somewhere in England,” her hobbies include gardening, reading, yoga, rusty metal, and old junk.
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