Family History and Legacy

Imagine the presumably pacifist Quaker physician surviving the wilds of frontier Louisiana only to see his descendants marry into families of battle-hardened warriors.

One survived being bayoneted nine times in the Revolutionary War; one was tomahawked to death in the Indian Wars, and his heart was eaten by the redskins to carry on his bravery; brothers served as Andrew Jackson's aides-de-camp at the Battle of New Orleans; and one was a seventeen-year-old marching off to the Civil War with his slave by his side.

For a storyteller, this family is fertile ground, and for the reader, it is fascinating.