I was going to write about the arrival of the first “wish list” seed catalogs and the prospect of winter seeding. You can see my article in here about that instead.
I was also going to write about the seasonal skunk alert and abundance of pungent, and sweet (now that’s an oxymoron) li’l skunks. They are wandering about, defending themselves against the occasional predatory dog, and/or losing their lives on the road (remember the Loudon Wainwright III song – “…you got your dead skunk in the middle of the road…stinking to high heaven…”. I thought about writing about lambing season, sheep shearing, and the inevitable cold spell that invariable occurs right after some sheep lose their wooly coats. I also won’t write about Mr. Green Jeans (aka Pops) getting a very prompt delivery of a truckload of dirt from Harvey Alger, to fill some muskrat holes which are causing the aptly named (by me) Folly Pond to leak profusely. All topics for another time!
Instead, I am writing about a random message I received on the Chronicle Facebook page. A man named Bill asked to contact me, claiming he might be related to me. Of course, my scam alert was in active mode, until I saw the photo he included. I had to zoom in on it, and carefully look it over, to make sure it wasn’t my own photo from a previous column. It was not!
As it turns out, Bill was researching his family tree, as he was wont to do periodically. This time, when he typed in the surname Whytal, lo and behold, a past column of mine popped up!
Through the wonders of the internet, a pair of distant cousins unite! I had written about a little figurine I inherited from my aunt, of a Civil War Zouave soldier. Bill has almost the identical hand painted soldier, with very slight differences, which told me this was no scam! Apparently, this ancestor had made several little statues, gifting them to family members. It’s amazing that these little treasures have traveled, unscathed, down the generations.
Pictured with his wife and son, is James Whytal, who lost his arm (musket ball or cannon ball, as the story I heard goes,) at the Battle of Bull Run in Manassas. His son was in the Spanish American War.
Of course, the ensuing messages between us sent me down a rabbit hole of research, which will definitely continue. As we chatted, his own last name resurfaced from the recesses of my memory, seemingly familiar, recalling my aunt mentioning it years ago. I guess I need to re-subscribe to Ancestry.com! My aunt, my last living relative of her generation, who gifted me the figurine, is now in a skilled nursing facility on LI. I will be visiting her in March and am excited to share this news with her. I am hopeful she will be able to understand and possibly remember.
I am trying to research local history of the Civil War for future articles, with the help of Jay Fulk and his collections, and more of my ancestor may resurface.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers, and maybe one day, our little paper will reconnect you with some distant family, from the information contained within our pages.
