Plain brown wrapper

I received a mysterious package in the mail today from Aunt Teeny.  It was a thick packet of papers, but was addressed to "Leah & John" at my address.  So I called Aunt Teeny and she said that she had found a pile of genealogy papers and put them in the mail for me.  No clue why it said Leah & John.  When I opened it, it appeared to be a random assortment of letters and old typewritten documents.  On closer inspection, I realized that it was years of correspondence between Aunt Miriam and Uncle Herman and a relative in New Jersey named Ray Eggers.  Mr. Eggers had spent years doing research on the family and had published books about it.  He was particularly determined to prove the link with Roger Williams. He did it the old fashioned way, by traveling all over the Northeast doing research using primary documents.   It took more than a decade, but he finally accomplished his mission.

As I scanned the documents to post online, it occurred to me that Ray Eggers was probably a source for the Weismantel family Ancestry research as well.  I have been communicating with Matt Weismantel through Ancestry over the last year.  Ray's connection with Marge Weismantel was the source of many photos and documents, as well as the Bryant family Bible, all of which had already been shared with me by Matt.  We are all descendants of Roger Williams through the Abbott line.  

All of Ray's work and correspondence is now posted in Google Docs and has been shared with my fellow Ancestry researchers.

May Abbott Cowan, half sister of George Wright Abbott > Bonnie F. Cowan > Raymond F. Eggers.
[George Wright Abbott > Jacqueline D. Abbott > John B. Zaun > Teresa Zaun Austin]

In talking with Aunt Teeny this afternoon, more stories came out about the Butler family.  She said that Rawley Martin Butler came home from WWI with syphilis.  He came to live with the Lukhards when Junior (Herman, Jr.) and Dee (Rawley) were young and shared a bed with the boys until the syphilis was discovered. Rawley's wife Hilda divorced him and he eventually died of it in 1944.  Rawley's grandson questions some of these details, however, because Rawley and Hilda had two children in the 20's and she lived to a ripe old age.  He also said that Rawley had been known to have a gambling problem and had lost the family home which could very well have been a reason for the divorce.  The chronology of this story doesn't exactly make sense, but either way, it's a very sad situation.