Family!

One of the shared joys with Jan was family and family history. We both have a strong sense of place and an even stronger sense of family. But for Jan, family wasn't just blood kin; she melded all of her friends and family into one great big, diverse and divergent, super-family. Others have seen it as well, I'm sure. She brought people together and then cemented them into a new organism of relationships and affections. We shared our discoveries about our families as we made them.

I remember her telling me of her relationship to the Crockets of Tennessee (yes, THOSE Crockets) and her relatives in the Dakotas and how she suspected that one of her relatives was actually a horse thief. I shared how my grandfather was jailed in Scotland for poaching on the Laird's estate. I recently found a map of Delmar in the late 1800s which showed spots familiar to her family.

She respected families and their fluidity and created new ones wherever she went.