Visiting family in 2013 once again stirred a  desire to delve into a genealogy study.  This is an interest I’ve pursued off and on for years, and presently have three large boxes of documents, books, and notes about my family history. The mountains and foothills of my hometown in Montana played such a prominent part in the history of my family, and I can’t see them without remembering the stories of my great great grandfather on my mother’s side and their journey across the plains in a covered wagon to the unsettled territory of Montana. The other side of my family is a little more mysterious, and the truth may never be known without a DNA analysis.

Let’s start at the beginning, for me, at least. We buried my dad in 1983. After his funeral, his sister Louise took me aside and told me that my paternal grandfather, Bert Lanning, was actually a man named “Toothaker”. She supplied no first name, and the story I was told by Aunt Louise was that this “Toothaker” was probably running from the law and had arrived in Montana from Chicago with nothing to his name but a gunny sack.

The truth is even a little more interesting. My quest for answers has revealed that there was no running from the law. There was a young man who had served in the Army during the Spanish American War by the name of William C. Toothaker. While he was serving in the military, he was informed by another soldier that his biological father was not really a Toothaker, but a man named “Lanning”. The story he was told must have been quite persuasive, because after his stint in the Army was done, Toothaker adopted the name Bert C. Lanning. He worked for the railroad for many years, and when he retired, he insisted that no one could collect his pension but him personally, and it involved a trip to a lawyer or accountant. Worried in his later years that his widow would be impoverished by his death, he sought legal help, and signed a paper describing the circumstances of his adoption of the name Lanning. The picture certainly looks a lot like my dad when he was a young man, and when compared to pictures of my grandfather in his later years, I can clearly see the young man he must have been. The back is inscribed “my half-brother, Bill Toothaker.”

Fast forward a couple of years.  I’ve been back in Atlanta and working hard on my family history for a couple of years now.  I’ve always said I wanted to travel when I retired, but my knees are very bad.  I was resolved to get them fixed and then travel, but that just doesn’t seem to happen.  Instead I spend my days playing computer Scrabble, doing jigsaw puzzles, seeing friends for movies and dinner, having the very occasional weekend trip and leading a converation class for visitors to the U.S. from all over the world.  Definitely a high point of my week, but still something is missing.  Not that I don’t enjoy all that, but still…..

Never one for long-term planning, yesterday I rekindled my interest in visiting Ecuador.  Found many airbnb possibilities, then thought no, I can’t afford that; I can’t visit another country with bad knees; I let my Spanish classes go due to money;  blabetty blabetty blab…….

Today I sent an email to one of the hosts and have been accepted by him as a guest.  Looking at airline flights, wondering if I’m just crazy as hell or if I should pursue this.  Money is a huge obstacle, but there is one way it could work.  So you’re probably wondering what in the bloody blue blazes (to coin one of my dad’s favorite phrases) does this have to do with my family history?  Well, I realized today that if my great great grandfather, his wife and their four-year-old son, along with another child of my ggGrandfather by a previous marriage could get in a wagon, hitch up a few cows – yes, cows, not oxen, as he understood with cows they’d always have fresh milk – and make the trek from Iowa to the gold fields of the Montana Territory in 1863, that I could get on an airplane and travel in relative comfort to Ecuador, and that in fact I should be deeply ashamed of myself if I didn’t do just that.

Tomorrow I’ll know if I can actually get on that plane.   Then I have to tell Ross that he’ll have to help me move all this “stuff” back into storage.