IF EVER TWO WERE ONE

One of those strange little coincidences at work today.

I was waiting on a customer who was looking for a book for
her 70 yr old aunt. The woman picked up a book from the new release
large size paperback table and asked me if I knew anything about it.

The title was : "If Ever Two Were One: A Diary of Love Eternal"
by Frank Ellingwood Abbot

This piqued my curiosity. I have Yankee ancestors named Ellingwood and
Abbot, and a quick glance at the back cover told me that this Abbot was
from Beverly, where my ancestors lived.

So tonight I googled him and, yep..he's not a direct ancestor but a
cousin. Our common ancestor was Ralph Ellingwood, waaaay back in Salem,
but where my line descends from Ralph Jr., Frank E. Abbot's descends from
another son.

The same is true of our Abbot ancestry, although there are several other
incidents of relationship through marriages of brothers or sisters into
both lines.

Seems Frank was a Harvard man, a Unitarian minister, and a contemporary
of Emerson and others. I haven't read everything I found as yet, but it
seems he had some small influence on American philosophy.

At any rate, the book is the story of his romance and marriage with
Katharine Loring of over 40 years and the subsequent 10 years after
her death, ending with his suicide on her grave in 1903.

Think I may buy the book. Strange to think that while he and his wife
were having tea with the Alcotts and Emerson his cousins, my ancestors,
were plowing fields up in Maine.

Never know what you might find on the family tree!