Living Memory

This Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to drive from Indiana to Utah with my father. Luckily, he and I share some common interests: Shakespeare and history. Since we were operating a motor vehicle and weren't interested in staging a tragedy, we talked the latter.

I told dad about my project, and told him what I know about John T. McNeff. Spoilers by damned. If I don't tell you the whole story, I may never learn the whole story.

John T. McNeff went missing in 1802 and no one in the family knows what happened to him. I found the story originally in a high school essay my Great Aunt Dorothy wrote, but she hadn't written what ancestor it was. I suspected it was John T., but confirmed it finally when I found this in a brief biography of his grandson in Iowa:

John T. McN., a dealer in fine horses, mysteriously
disappeared in 1802, while away with a drove of horses; supposed to have been murdered;


So, that's what I told my dad, who replied, "Oh, I know that story."

What?

As a kid, Dad loved to hear these tales as much as I do. He said his grandmother's sisters told him this story. He didn't know the names, but they told him about his ancestor who took horses down the river to New Orleans and never returned. He also told me that a party of men had gone to look for him - to find any trace he may have left behind. He was never heard from again.

A new plot twist! A new piece of the puzzle! They went to look for him. I immediately started theorizing about the search party ... what made them set out in the wilderness to find him. My imagination was going wild when suddenly it struck me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

All this time I thought I was mining a story no one knew for a good narrative. But this story is alive. This story comes to me in an unbroken oral tradition. Over 200 years ago, it has cut so deep into the life of this family, that its children are still telling it ... writing it ... blogging it.

I'm picking at a very deep wound. But sometimes the itch is so great you just can't help it.

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If you'd like to read David Thompson McNeff's biography, click here and scroll down to the M's.