so i have this one matriarch in my family; her name was mary (polly) sumner turner. she would be one of my great-great-great-great grandmothers. she's got quite a story.

apparently her father was in the boston tea party and then the revolution, but i haven't been able to confirm that. what i know is that she lived in maine and had about nine children. i've been trying to track them down only semi-successfully. she married a guy named ebenezer turner who was a character in his own right.

what happened was, a cousin of ebenezer was a preacher and landed in quincy, illinois and sent back and said you all ought to come out here, the land is great and there's no rocks, it's good farming.

of ebenezer and polly's nine children, the oldest, joseph, wanted to go, but had three children of his own already. their oldest daughter, mary, had married my great-great-great grandfather joseph, and had three already, including my great-great grandfather, but they wanted to go too. one middle one just went out there and the cousin hired him and he got married. then another middle kid went out there and liked it too. pretty soon they decided to do it, and grandpa ebenezer went out there to get things ready for polly sumner turner. he was in his sixties already and she was almost sixty, but he bought a place in downtown quincy and began working on some land that he owned in the northeast part of town too. he was ready for them to come.

it was a 1600-mile horseback journey from maine to illinois. joseph turner and three kids in one wagon, joseph leverett (and mary turner) and three kids in another wagon, young john in a wagon with only luggage, and finally what they called a "one-horse chaise" or "one-horse shay". this was kind of like a racing outfit, horse and small wagon only, no luggage. grandma sumner-turner got that one, along with the other teenager, anne. sure, sometimes they switched off - she could go in one of the family wagons, but usually she took that shay. it was a rough and bumpy road, but she was tough. once the harness broke and she fell - she was in it with ann at the time. this would have been in ohio, maybe. but she made it ok to quincy.

grandpa ebenezer, on his way to maine, had taken dandelion seeds. he'd done that just because he liked eating them. later generations blamed him for the dandelions in their yard, and noticed that dandelions only liked it where there were people. they seemed to feel he had brought them to the midwest (well he had, but was he first? grandpa ebenezer was somewhat visionary - he saw that someday you could get from boston to illinois in maybe only a day. it had taken his family sixty days. family legend has it that he was so homesick and anxious that he walked, with his cane, from quincy to springfield to meet them.

when they had their reunion, they couldn't talk, because they were all crying. the young kids wondered why you'd cry over such a thing.

cholera had taken 6% of quincy the year they got there, 1834. but they moved out to the country, to that land that ebenezer was developing, and they survived that epidemic and a depression that started soon after. they were farmers and carpenters; the two josephs got to work and started providing for their families. both eventually moved to iowa, and the turners somewhat dispersed over the years.

but a couple of years back, somebody vandalized polly sumner turner's gravestone. it was found, undamaged, in some random place around quincy. i guess it wasn't damaged so much as just removed, and thrown around. it was full of lichen and such, and the local monument company fixed it up. in the process they looked up all this boston tea-party and revolution kind of stuff and she had a kind of moment of fame. But unfortunately, as far as i know, nobody spoke up for her in the quincy area.

but when i found out, i wrote to the monument guy. apparently they just do this kind of thing, and don't really expect anyone to notice. but i said, thank you, she's my great-great-great-great grandmother, and we were not around to see you do it, but we appreciate the attention you put into her gravestone marker, and shining it up and putting it back. i'll keep you posted.

quincy is but a hollow shell of what it was in the days of the mormons, and elijah lovejoy, and the railroad and steamboat boom; it was a wild town back then. but that cholera was something you didn't mess with. i think she lived to be a fine old age, well respected as a grand matriarch. there was a question of whether a loom that they had for years, came from her, and was brought out on that 1600-mile trip. i wouldn't be surprised. it's probably why she preferred the shay. you could just get away quickly, if you had to, and weren't tied to the ground like a huge wagon with loom and all in it.