She Recognized the Old Lady in the Coffin
Too many family histories read, to the outsider, like a litany of birth dates, marriage dates, death dates, the dates of everyone’s descendants and everyone’s ancestors and everyone’s cousins, all the small-print data that my mother, no genealogist, dismissed as “the begats” – “like the parts of the Old Testament you skip.” My mother wanted stories. She would have enjoyed Florence Harris Abel’s 1986 book The Beitzel Family, an unexpected treasure in the stacks at Frostburg State University’s Ort Library. Yes, Abel includes all the begats of her sprawling Garrett County subject, but like Deuteronomy they are easily skipped to get to the wealth of good stories. Abel even includes stories on a theme most family histories shun: the supernatural. Abel titles one “The Midnight Visitor.” One night in spring 1930, not long after their marriage, while Beitzel descendant Clarence Sell peacefully slept, young Mrs. Sell* beside him was abruptly awakened. Looking up she saw a strange el...