I think they just made him deaf and stiff. So, he couldn't turn his head the last time to see the train coming, or hear the whistle!

(that's part of the story, too)

You need to check out the brain of clodfobble thread.

Clearly, only she was pure enough of heart or brain to see the unicorn. To everyone else it looked like Pegasus. OR the Sinclair dinosaur. (me)

Sure, sure, that's what I meant. I never met the man, but I'm sure he wouldn't design no pansy-ass unicorn.

Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, was beheaded on 9 April 1747, aged 80, on Tower Hill in London, becoming the last man to die in this manner.

<Yes, I'm Scottish>

The story probably sounds better with only partial information. I assume his relationship with alcohol, God, and reality resembles his descendants'. He was supposed to have failed as a farmer as well. His youngest son was a semi-famous writer/Irish Nationalist turned Christian Brother so our official family history, like probable emigration from Wales at some point, may have been cleaned up a bit for public consumption to support changing political agendas. I'd like to do a serious records search on them because there are some really tantalizing bits a information, like the writer's relationship with a married Quaker woman (Mary Leadbeater's daughter) and Yeats. There are a lot more google hits today than there used to be so if I procrastinate today...

George A. Corey, on my mother's side of the family. Civil War -- fought with a Massachusetts regiment in about a dozen battles from New Bern NC on. Captured by Confederates at Cold Harbor, IIRC, and fetched up in Andersonville for half a year. The experience permanently affected his attitude towards leftovers -- throwing food out just wasn't allowed. "I'll eat it tomorrow for breakfast," family legend quotes Grampa Corey. And he would too, all his life. At the end of the war after convalescing from Andersonville for several months he got in fairly serious trouble by mishandling his leave time but apparently was acquitted of the charge of desertion, more or less on the grounds of no harm, no foul. Seems they concluded his absence was owing to his never having gotten leave before and flubbing it up by inexperience -- and they were demobilizing most of the Army anyway at the time.

civil war ancestors are teh best!

I've got some served in some Pa. regiment.

Maybe the Company E, 127th Infantry Pennsylvania Volunteers? With my great-great-great-great-great grandpa!

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com...0004photo.html

he got in trouble for mishandling his leave after Andersonville? That's just wrong

Apparently I'm related to Sam Houston on my Dad's side... but that's the only one I know of that's interesting at all.

edit:
Except for the Hunkapillar branch of the family, my mother's maternal grandparents'... Including Nonnie Hunkapillar, Bug Hunkapillar, Dot Hunkapillar, Boy Hunkapillar (apparently not his real name - he didn't have one. He was always just "Boy".)... Apparently the Hungerbieler clan came over from Germany. Before they used the name Hunkapillar, for one or two generations it was Hungerpillar, and before that it was Hungerbieler, specifically Johann Conrad Hungerbieler, who came to the US in 1752 from Dossenheim, Germany.

On my mother's dad's side, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (that's nine "great"s), Thomas Dunn, arrived on the ship Temperance in Virginia in 1620, as a 14 year-old, as a servant to Sir George Yeardley, the governor of Virginia, having been born in 1606 outside Yorkshire, England.

So, your family is from TX, Ibram? Well that would explain the Dweller NSFW pics. Everything is bigger in TX. :p:

This is the account of my second cousin 3 times removed and how he died. He was the uncle of George Bernard Shaw who penned this memory of him. Although a very distant relative it's a rather wierd story!

William Bernard Shaw (Uncle Barney) smoked and drank, gave up alcohol after age 50, played the ophicleide (obsolete wind instrument), At age 60, he renounced the instrument and married a lady of great piety and fell silent. He died Dr. Eustice's mental asylum in North Dublin in a most peculiar way.

Being "impatient for heaven", he discovered an absolutely original method of suicide. It was irresistibly amusing and no one had ever thought of it, involving as it did, an empty carpet bag. However, in the act of placing the bag over his head, Uncle Barney jammed the mechanism of his heart in a paroxysm of laughter-which the merest recollection of his suicidal technique never failed to promote among the Shaws-and the result was he died a second before he killed himself.

The coroner's court described the death as being "from natural causes".

Nah, my folks are from Alabama.

Nope, you're from Yorkshire.
That's God's Own County.
They grow them big up there too!

My great grandmother hung herself after spending the week in an insane asylum...my great uncle hung himself...lots of drunks and Ladies of the (Early) Evening on my mom's side - one great aunt used to sit in bars waiting for "gentlemen" to buy her drinks.

See? It's in the blood.