about four thirty in the morning. i had wild dreams and woke suddenly, then was unable to get back to sleep. it's possible that a teenager also came in about that time, maybe three thirty, needing something, and this woke my wife up; she too was having trouble. so i got up and got out the computer to calm down my mind. my usual trick is online boggle. finding words in a little cube of five by five letters, i actually find relaxing in a kind of busy way. but the internet kept shutting down my computer. so here i am.

whet triggered my bad dreams is this. i am writing a book about my great great grandfather. he grew up on a farm in southwest illinois, not far from quincy, but at one point he went to college. he had an inclination toward being an english teacher, but illinois was in its early days, and that often didn't pay enough. besides, he wanted to go out to nebraska and settle in the new area. when he went to settle nebraska, he found only one student, and turned around and came back. next time he got there, he just stayed - but, it didn't work. the civil war, which was being fought on the border of kansas and missouri, caught up with him. he had to sleep with his gun in his hand, and eventually came back to illinois.

but here was the kicker. he had an older brother, one year older, who he grew up with. they had traveled by wagon 1600 miles from maine, when he was four and the brother was five. when it was time to go to college, both went; they went to shurtleff college in alton. he went back to madison university in new york to finish his degree, while his brother stayed in illinois. but the brother contracted cholera and died; he was now maybe twenty or twenty one. i can hardly imagine.

somewhere i read something where the brother was desperately traveling across illinois to get home before he died. maybe he knew that cholera was fatal. but i lost whatever it was i had read. the two sources that i am using - one was written by the great-great grandfather himself, the other by a newspaper - do not have that part. but i know i read it somewhere, and i'm trying to remember where.

and that's a problem. for some reason my mind took off from that little story and applied it, and it woke me up in the middle of the night.

i think this covid stuff is hard on everyone. i know i can't read the news to distract myself from daily life; the news is worse than anything i've ever read. as for the kids, we let them be with their friends, but we feel like we're in danger most of the time, because we don't fully trust them to keep six feet all the time even though as far as i can tell they are doing their best, and their friends are trying as well. they are trying to pass school when all they have is us reminding them and they have programmed themselves to ignore us. clean their room? sure they'll do it. feed the cats? sure they will.

but in my dreams they are out there and bad things are happening. or they're happening to someone, i can't quite tell, because i woke up. it was not good though. i think a lot of people are in my position.

my friends in texas are in much worse shape than i am. they live in a crowded city and virtually nobody wears masks. sure there is a public recommendation that everyone wear one. but no one does. and they have trouble even getting groceries without running into people. live is going back to normal - people are taking care of their pets, for example, or fixing something around the house. but if every place that does business is dangerous - what do you do? it's choosing between staying cooped up and moving on. and moving on can be fatal.

the influence of disease on these families is already becoming bigger as i write. i am also doing research that i like, about the settlement of the west, about quincy as a frontier town, about the early settling of nebraska (these guys were there in like the year omaha became a city) - and i'm working that information in there. but that means i have to find out about who had cholera in illinois in the mid-1800's. the year my great-great-grandfather got there, cholera took 6% of the city. that's a lot. and, he had to live in the city.

he lived right on maine street, which he spelled main street at some point, or someone changed in the typing. this was in what is today the historic district of quincy. at the time, remember, he was four, his brother was five, and there was a younger brother two. a sister was born while they were in the city. mom got measles, but after the sister was born. the baby got one measle and lived. they considered themselves very lucky. nobody got cholera. within a couple years, they moved out to the country and never came back.

quincy was right on the river across from hannibal missouri. at that time, 1834-36, one could already sense the coming of the civil war. elijah lovejoy, a fellow mainer, had already been killed in alton. illinois was the free state side.

and then on top of that the whole mormon thing happened. the story as i know it is something like this. mormonism had become quite big especially back in kirtland ohio, but there was a branch out in western missouri, independence to be exact, that was having a lot of trouble. joseph smith was at the time a leader but brigham young appeared too. brigham young brought a group back from missouri to illinois, and settled in quincy but then moved a little north to nauvoo. meanwhile joseph smith was killed up in carthage illinois, which wasn't far from quincy either, maybe a little farther than nauvoo. so brigham young took over the leadership. people objected to the mormons, and eventually ran them out. but they actually did better in quincy than in most places.

during this time, the family was all farmers. they lived out in livingston township, and had less and less to do with quincy itself, or the politics of the day. they did carpentry or whatever they had to to make money, but by staying out in the country, they avoided some of these diseases for at least as long as they could.

all my years in southern illinois, eighteen to be exact, and i never saw downtown quincy. i'm kind of sorry now that i never had the chance. it has a reputation of being a little of a shell of a place - but i may be wrong about that. it may have more life than i was thinking. i just don't really know.

i did however visit alton, where there is actually a leverett street, right in the middle of shurtleff college. and shurtleff college is now the southern illinois university dental school. a pretty little brick street runs right through the old houses.

in these coronavirus times i hurry to write everything i've ever wanted to write. i am crystallizing my desire to finish this genealogy in at least the best way i know possible. it's somewhat hurried to research these jayhawkers and border ruffians on the border of kansas, missouri and nebraska, for example, when what i'd really like to do is just spend some time doing it, and learn a little more about what it was really like out there. something i read said that their first baby died, and they buried her out on the prairie in salem nebraska, the first person in the salem cemetery. but i checked both cemeteries and found nobody by her name. and i read something else that said she died in transit, on the way out there. there are some mysteries i have to get to the bottom of.