His Grandpappy's Grandpappy Told Him the Story

...of three brothers, who left Scotland for the Americas in the 1600's. Younger brothers of the clan Guthrie and one was a preacher or so the story was told to my father.

Yeah, O.K. I went looking for these three brothers, because how hard can it be to find three dead guys from the 1600's? I hated to tell my dad that it wasn't that simple. But since he passed away before we really got started my daughter and I went diggin' for them. Instead of the brothers we first found cousins, OMG cousins we didn't even know existed and landed slap dab in the middle of a family scandal (who knew?). But, the interesting thing was they all knew the story of the brothers, with little variation, each one with a new little piece of the story. There was a preacher, yeah he was from NY, moved to Virginia or maybe Kentucky, went out west somewhere, he died struck by lightening, wife came back, he had a bunch of kids....yadda, yadda, yadda.

Did I mention, I love puzzles. So, we started diggin' harder, my daughter and me. OMG we searched census records, birth records, death records, on and on. Guess what? We found him. Maybe not one of the brothers, maybe a son of one of the brothers, maybe not our brother (because we have been working on him for 10 years). But we found George Guthrie, a Baptist Preacher, whose first records where some baptisms he performed in the mid 1700's at Canoe Brook, N.J. in the church that was held in a barn on someones farm. He was sent to help build the first Baptist Church in Northfield, Livingston Township, Essex Co. N.J., From there we found an old Church History written in long hand, held by the Historical Society, and for $4 they sent me a copy. There in long hand from the late 1700's reads "... Guthrie it is said, came from Kentucky to which state he after returned, he married a sister of the wife of deacon Thomas Force, and was killed by lightening."

So, I'm guessing that those old stories that keep getting passed down have a grain of truth in them. Now, if I can just find my mom's uncle who is a federal fugitive, hunted by the Pinkerton's for stealing all his fathers money from the bank.