so i'm indexing my latest book, but i'm bogged down - it's tedious work. i've finished about 139 out of 239 pages, so i'm actually making fair progress, and should have the book published in a few days. it will be the second in a series about my ancestors on my dad's side, who came down through the early puritans (that was the first book) and then, these eighteenth-century folks, and then through the pioneers on the prairie.

one of the early ones was john leverett of harvard, who wasn't an ancestor directly but was pretty close. he changed harvard from a divinity school to a secular school, thus thumbing his nose at cotton mather. john actually designed massachusetts hall, which was the main building of harvard college for many years, and he put it at the site where he himself lived while he was president. i didn't make such a big deal of that in the book, but looking back, it really is pretty remarkable.

then there were the quilt makers - like john, relatives but not ancestors. they got fabrics from around europe and put them into this intense quilt. we were lucky here because the saltonstalls were better at preserving such things than we are. i have lost a couple of quilts myself, yet, the saltonstalls, and the peabody essex museum, managed to save this one, which is the oldest known quilt from colonial america.

but then we have a couple of guys who lived through the times of hardship. that's what they call the years of occupation before the revolutionary war, when boston was a rough town to live in. these two brothers grew up in the early 1700's and their dad was poor, though he was a talented metalsmith. the boys, thomas and john, went into the printing business and at one point benjamin franklin sold them a couple reams of paper from philadelphia, which got lost in transit. thomas was the one who was most into printing - he'd print psalms, almanacs, grammar books, anything. and he made a goodly fortune.

at the time there was even better money in importing the newest fabrics from london, so that's what john did. he started out printing with thomas but then moved over into the town dock where he sold his fabrics and sewing supplies - and he too made a goodly fortune. but history caught up with him. when the british occupied boston, there was a series of events - occupation, seige, boston massacre, boston tea party, you get the picture. times were bad; it was the times of hardship. one thing that was happening was that ships were just taking people out of the streets and docks and i suspect this might have happened to my relatives. but in any case john, who had this warehouse, lost it and quit. i think it may have been ransacked by anti-british rioters though this one author says it was sacked by the british troops themselves. why the british troops would sack a warehouse, i don't know. it seems to me the anti-british import crowd (like at the tea party) had more of a reason.

in any case john became an overseer of the poor, and rode out the rest of the times of hardship overseeing the poor. somehow his son ended up with a decent fortune and didn't have to work, but i suspect that fortune came from the warehouse, not from being a social worker. as overseer of the poor he would wander the poor neighborhoods of boston making sure the widows and single mothers were still eating.

there's actually quite a bit more to the story - both died soon after the war, and their sons, john and thomas respectively, carried on. thomas was a surgeon, but made the mistake of getting on the wrong boat, one that was captured, during the war. the british were cruel to their captives. they let them rot in the hull of a ship parked in brooklyn harbor. unbelievably squalid conditions. young thomas the surgeon ended up dying early for his trouble.

both had gone to harvard in the class of 1776. that year, the year the war broke out wholesale, harvard moved up to concord. they did not have a wonderful time, as concord was cold, and their quarters were make-shift, and the classrooms weren't so great either. it was kind of like this year - they threw some work at them and then gave them a pass. thomas was trying to be a surgeon, while young john, his cousin, was in law. but john never ended up in law. he became a gentleman farmer, raising like eleven kids on a farm in windsor vermont.

i can relate to john the young guy, who ends up raising way too many kids out on a farm, and writes a lot and is mostly into ideas. when the war came 'round his cousin signed up and paid for it with his life, while john was out in connecticut taking care of his parents, who were old and sick. so john basically got out of the revolution which is why i sit here today probably. no i take that back, my true ancestor was probably the guy who signed up - he also had eleven kids - and was an officer in the battle of monmouth and the battle of rhode island. officers didn't get paid so well but at least they gave the orders, so it was other people who got killed. he survived and went home to tell the tale.

that's it, it's all in the book. read it and weep.