An Old Friend as Ancient History

Today, August 17, is a dear friend’s  99^th birthday.  I’ll call him “W.”

Perhaps I should say  he would be 99 were he still alive.  I was a contemporary of his.

 I was thinking about that recently and realized that, having been born in 1913, there might well have been a generational overlap in that he might have been alive at the same time as someone who lived during the era of the Civil War.  That unknown person need only have been in his late forties.

W’s father, born in 1870, most certainly knew someone of that era as well as the 1849 California Gold Rush. 

W’s grandfather probably crossed paths with a veteran of the War of 1812.

And, likewise, W’s great grandfather could very well have known some of the participants in the American Revolution of 1776.

Somehow all that ancient history doesn’t seem so ancient anymore, does it?

PS:  I received an email from a friend today who has a lot of experience with the Mormon ancestry project and knows how to find such stuff.  She did a bit of research after reading the above, and says W's grandfather was a Civil War veteran and his great-grandfather on his maternal side fought in the American Revolution with a Rhode Island company. 

We all know people who are today great-grandparents, do we not?  I'll say it again:  All that ancient history doesn't seem so ancient anymore.