As I wait for word from Spain announcing the birth of my granddaughter I have been looking back at our family history. One of the few family keepsakes that I have from our family is a daguerreotype of a man in a military uniform. On the back someone had written the following, Issac Bunch born 1837, died in the Civil War. I can remember seeing this picture when I was a child visiting my Grandmother in California. Other than the information on the picture and being told that he was my Great Grandfather nobody seemed to know much about Issac Bunch
I had tried to find out about him 30 years ago when I sent off to the National Archives to request military records for him. They had answered that they had no record of Issac Bunch from Missouri, which is where my father had told me he lived.
Many years later my father was going to visit his half sister, my Aunt Myrtle, who was then in her 90s. I asked him to take along a tape recorder and ask her about our family history. The key thing I discovered from the tape of my aunt was that my grandfather had come to California from Keokuk, Iowa. Out of curiosity I logged onto the Mormon genealogical website last year and typed in my grandfather's name, his father's name, my grandfather's birth year (1860) and Keokuk, Iowa. I was stunned when he came up and for the first time I discovered the name of my great grandmother, who was also listed. Her name was Arabella! By some quirk of fate, my daughter Sarah and her husband Alex had chosen the name Arabella for my granddaughter's name.
Another weird coincidence was my grandfather's birth date. I recalled my mother telling me that when I was born my father's sisters (he had six of them and was the only boy) were excited because not only was I named after my grandfather, but I was almost born on his birthday. I came along on December 5Th and he was born on December 6Th. Then, I recalled that my father had died on December 7Th. My grandfather had been born on the eve of the Civil War in 1860 and died on the eve of World War Two in 1940. His only son served in that war and of course one of the most significant dates of the war was December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.
They say that history repeats itself, but not in the exact same way. Many of us baby boomers recall the similarities between the assassinations of John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960, Kennedy was shot by an assassin from a warehouse who then ran to a theater where he was captured, Lincoln was killed by an assassin in a theater and the assassin then ran to a warehouse. Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln and Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy. Both had vice presidents named Johnson. Both had wives who lost babies while in the White House. The weird similarities went on and on and I can't remember all of them, but I'm sure that someone has recorded them on the Internet somewhere.
Then there was the strange fact that
Now, of course these are just strange coincidences according to some. Others see synchronicity or even a case for reincarnation in these odd events. I am fascinated by them, but more so by the connection that we have to these ancestors. What characteristics must we have inherited from our grandparents seven times removed? And somehow, placing them in history makes it all the more real.
After I discovered Arabella, I tried looking for Issac in the Civil War military records as a soldier from Keokuk, Iowa. Finally, I came across a history of Civil War Military Units from Iowa and there I found Issac. Eventually, I traced him to Shiloh Battlefield at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, where he died in what was up to that time the worst battle in American history. More Americans were killed in that single battle than in all the previous wars America had fought. The Battle of Shiloh took place on April 6Th and 7Th of 1862. On one of those days my great grandfather died. My father was born on April 8Th 1920. Can you guess what I'm thinking? You don't suppose Sarah might be going to carry the baby until April do you?
