Gone but not Forgotten

This is my favorite picture of my grandmother

and my daughter. Three years ago today she passed at the age of 92.

In this photograph she is well

into her eighties and still an incredibly active

and dynamic woman. It was this day that my beautiful daughter with the innocence of childhood looked up at her great grandmother and said "I didn't know an old woman could be SO pretty." Kids, you can't censor what comes out of their mouths. There were times when my grandmother considered being called old an insult, and she tried her hardest

not to act old. But on this occasion she seemed to

enjoy the sentiment. We enjoyed her company tremendously and think of her particularly today.

CSI Civil War Style

Long before there were televisions and crime scene investigators, the US government was engaged in such investigations. I am fascinated by the civil war pension file of my husband's ancestor, Jacob Stuck. His pension
file reads like an episode of CSI as the investigator post-humously attempted to recreate Jacob Stuck's love life and death.

Jacob Stuck was married three times, never divorced. He lived in central Pennsylvania

primarily with the exception of an intriguing trip out West. He served in the Civil War for the Union in D Company 74th Pennsylvania Infantry. He survived the war, applied for an invalid pension, and died in 1894. The pension file investigates who is his rightful widow: wife #2 Sarah Miller, mother of two of his children, who subsequently married John Foust, or wife #3 Sophia Wagner with whom he had eleven children.

His third wife with whom he had eleven children was his most prolific genetic legacy. It is for these Stuck descendants and for my husband's line that I finally digitize this pension file. Attached is the first half of the summary of the legal investigator's conclusions on this interesting case.