"People like to trace their ancestry." Richard Dawkins

This post is mostly fiction – but informed fiction.  One of my hobbies is genealogy, a hobby I started long before the Internet when I moved to the vicinity of Washington DC and the resources of the National Archives and the Library of Congress.

In discovering your ancestors you find some that intrigue you.  You discover enough of their history so that you form an opinion about their personality, their character, the nature of their life and times.  It was so with me about my gr-gr-grandfather, Daniel B, Eldridge – my paternal grandfather’s maternal grandfather.  He lived through the Civil War and it must have been devastating for him.

He was born in 1835 in Halifax, Virginia, the youngest of a family of 11.  His father was very well off and owned a plantation of over 900 acres and fifty slaves.  So Daniel was born into a life of luxury and – no doubt – was waited on hand and foot and spoiled.  The1850 census shows him enrolled in the private Randolph-Macon College, which also operated a high school at that time, in Mecklinburg Co., Virginia.  In 1856 he marries Amanda Evans – who is also an interesting person but is a story for another time and the 1860 census shows Daniel and Amanda living in Forsyth Co., NC with their two daughters – the eldest of whom, Alice, is my ancestor.  The value of their personal property is very large compared with neighbors.

Then the Civil War came in 1861 and Daniel and Amanda lost everything.  They had to declare bankruptcy in 1868.  Some of Daniel’s older brothers had moved to Texas much earlier and Daniel, Amanda, and Daniel’s mother, Mildred, followed them.  Amanda dies of TB the following year and the 1870 census shows Daniel living with three daughters ages, 13, 12, 6 and a son 5.  In my fiction I see Daniel making life a living hell for his two older daughters demanding that they do all of the housework and wait on him - as he was accustomed to.  Alice, my ancestor leaves home and marries my Welch gr-grandfather the following year, 1871, at the age of 14.  My fiction says that her younger sister left as soon as possible as well. Daniel dies in 1885 deeply in debt.  How did he interact with the rest of his family after Amanda’s death?  Who helped him with the younger children after the older ones left?

So I see Daniel a tragic character, a product of his birth and times, who could never adjust to the reality of the world after the Civil War.  There must’ve been many others like him.

Seeing the richness possible in telling his story I tried once to write a book about his life but failed.  I did too much research about the times and felt as if I had to include everything I had learned, e.g., ether was first used in 1846.  I wish I was a better author because there is a great story about Daniel.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch