I wanna soak up the sun

What a day! I nearly froze walking from the train to work this morning, a brisk 31 degrees with a wind chill in the 20's. Clear and beautiful. The walk back to the train was as beautiful, but it was about 58 degrees. Downright balmy. Spring has sprung, at least for the day. I expect it will be back in the low 30's tonight, if not the high 20's.

So tonight's the night we get to watch Martin Sheen trace his family lineage. Wouldn't be my first choice, but I love the show and I'm excited to watch.

A little more on the story of the family of my surname. My great-grandfather (the father of my missing great-aunt) came to the United states in 1869 when he was 9 with his parents, older brother and two sisters. I have them on the ship's manifest, the "City of Dublin". My dad had always heard a story that my great-grandfather "lost" a brother in New York, that when they were disembarking in the chaos this brother was separated from the rest of the family. I initially thought this couldn't be the case as I could later find everyone that was with the family on the manifest. What I've recently learned is that supposedly his parents, my great-great-grandparents, arrived in the U.S. prior to this and that this was their second immigration. That perhaps it was in the first arrival that a son was lost. I do know from the 1900 census she answered that she had given birth to 6 children, and 4 were living. I know what happened to the four, but was one of the 6 the child that disappeared?

My grandfather worked as a traveling salesman. His work took him to Texas at some point and he knocked on a gentleman's door and found someone with the same last name. Being unusual, and Swiss, they started talking about ancestors that might be common. The story that my grandfather heard is that his relative had gotten separated from his family arriving on a ship in New York from Switzerland. Was it the lost brother? I wish I knew who my grandfather found as there are ways today to check that. I had my dad send in his a swab so that his DNA could be added to the DNA registry on Ancestry. Maybe someday someone else with my surname thru the male ancestors will be as interested in genealogy as I am. Right now he's the only one out there with the family DNA registered.