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distance, sat through a long service in the morning and another in the afternoon, and walked back again. She was not strong enough to go on foot with the baby in her arms. The dilemma was resolved by her oldest daughter, Jeannot Creighton (my source is again that same old woman, only now it was herself she was telling about), who loved her mother and father so well that she thought it an honor to do for and wait upon them. On Sunday morning she would milk the cow and do up the housework and then carry the baby eight miles to Cadiz, and if it fretted during the service she took it from her mother and, sitting on a log outside, dandled it on her knee.
    All this was recounted by Jeannot Creighton Maxwell to my Grandfather Maxwell’s sister Sarah, a great while later, and found its way into a letter dated April 2, 1876. In the same letter, my grandfather’s sister wrote, “I will speak of Aunt Jane’s visit [to Uhrichsville, Ohio] now. I wish you could have seen and conversed with her. She is very intelligent, and has a splendid memory. It does not seem the least impaired by age or ill health, and she reads a great deal.… I like her very much, she seemed so like father and looked like him. I was sorry for the poor old soul. Her days of usefulness are over, and no one wishes to be troubled with the care of her. She thinks all young folks should marry. She stayed single to please and care for an aged and feeble father. He gave all he had to Uncle Walter to take care of her, but his wife makes it so unpleasant for her that she cannot stay there in peace any longer.” *
    Shunted from one relative to another, Jeannot Creighton Maxwell died ten years later, in Iowa, on a visit to the widow of Sam Dixon Maxwell, who was her cousin. In going through her effects they found “some very ancient books, letters, and papers of various kinds”—including the letter written by Robert Maxwell to his brother Henry during the War of 1812, and a volume of sermons with the name “David Maxwill” on the flyleaf. There is no David Maxwell among the descendants of Henry Maxwell. He must have brought this book with him when he came to America, the one clue to the family in Scotland he sprang from.
    Walter Maxwell’s unpleasant wife who drove his sister out of the house was born Moriah Shipton. Mary Atkinson Maxwell married Samuel McBarnes, William married Sarah McGraw, and the second Agnes Carson married John Lock. Elizabeth Stevenson and Polly Ann married Robert and James Gibson, who may have been brothers, and Alexander Edie and Robert married Sarah and Jemima Keepers, who were sisters. Keepers is a Welsh name, and came down through my father to me.
    This is the place where I stop being totally dependent on family archives and can speak from experience and memory—that is, from photographs that were around me during my childhood, and remarks in which as much information was conveyed by the speaker’s tone of voice as by what was said. The sense of distance is greatly diminished.
    I hear my father’s voice, saying, “Jemima Keepers was a remarkable woman.” He never lied about anything, and so it doesn’t occur to me to treat this statement skeptically.“The Keeperses were a very fine family,” he says. But here, though I accept what he says, I am far from sure what he means. And I can’t ask him because he has gone to join the people he was talking about. I don’t think he meant that they were socially important. Jemima Keepers’ father, William Keepers, had an iron forge. Before that, the Keepers men were farmers in Maryland. My father may have meant only that they didn’t use conspicuously bad grammar or owe anybody a dime; he attached great importance to financial probity. Or he could have meant that they were people of intelligence and character. In any case, he was speaking from first-hand knowledge. My Grandfather Maxwell took him on a family visit to Ohio when my father was a little boy, and he met several of his uncles