Family Ties-

Recently, Mike was posting about family history, so I decided to do my part-

On my father's side my ancestors were good, hard-working English folk, although they sometime had differences of opinion with the authorities (and their wives) as to what contsituted "hard work"...


Having listened to enough criticism of his chosen lifestyle, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Jedidiah Colonel, sailed for the New World in the middle of the 17th century. Upon arriving in Boston he did what any enterprising, red-blooded young American would do- fell in love and took himself a bride.

Unfortunately, at some point the local authorities were informed by the English authorities that he had, in fact, already done the same thing in England, and his English bride was wondering where he was. Since Brigham Young was still a century and a half from being born and polygamy was not yet a legitimate lifestyle choice, the ugly word "bigamy" surfaced and they cut off one of Jedidiah Colonel's ears.

Such is the life of a pioneer.

A few decades later, one of Jedidiah's grandsons ran afoul of another set of authorities in Salem, Massachusetts and got himself executed as a witch.

Obviously, the Colonel family has had "issues" with authority over the years.

Nothing much of interest happened to the family for a few hundred years, until the 1890s when my great-great grandad, Horace Colonel, decided to go into the airline business about 30 years too soon-


On my mother's side, the relatives came from Germany in the mid 19th century, and their sole claim to fame is having a quarrel with their cousins; the cousins (after breaking all ties) went on to found the Poland Spring water company...


oh well.