This is the story of my family, dating back in some cases to the late 17th century. It contains the journals and writings of many of my ancestors and relatives in their nearly original form. These people wrote of their lives, the good, the bad, the joys, the sorrows, the successes, and the failures. There is no holding back; this is the reality of life as they experienced it. Most of the writings start around 1870 and end in the 1950's. I found them fascinating. I decided to write this for a number of reasons. I used to be an engineer, but on retirement started writing. I have written one textbook, one non-fiction book, and so far, four novels, all available on Amazon Kindle and Create Space. This will be the second non-fiction book and I am currently writing my fifth novel. Many in my family have gathered a quite a cache of information on our genealogy over the years. They have shared it with me and I in turn have transformed it into a book, adding information from the Internet and other sources to illuminate the times these people lived in and to analyze why they did what they did. I particularly owe thanks to Carolyn Miller, who cracked the code of the Plunketts, my sister Grace Ford who discovered our grandfather Clore had a long line of traceable ancestors including Revolutionary War Heroes, JJ Robinson who gave me a lot of anecdotal information, and my mother who collected family information for years and passed it on to her children. I also used Fold3.com, Archives.com, Ancestry.com, and other Internet sources, particularly Wikipedia for historical references. Another reason for writing this was to research the many myths that have circulated in the family for years. Like all families, mine has generated myths that have grown and expanded over the years to the point that they are accepted as absolute truth, when in fact they may be just that, namely myths. I decided to find the truth, and, thanks to the availability of information in this age of electronics, did find the truth. Sometimes myth was correct, and sometimes not. This is the pure unvarnished truth about my family, reality at its best or worst, depending on your point of view. This was a labor of love, intended to preserve the memory of my ancestors. In the Jewish religion there is little belief in an afterlife, but it is said that we live on in the memory of the living. I am doing my part to preserve the memory of my forbears. In the process I learned a lot about myself and why I am the way I am. I would encourage everyone to research his or her ancestry for the same reason. The accounts written by my family are reality at its rawest. These are true accounts of life on the high plains. These are true tales told by common people as told by themselves of their everyday lives starting about 1870 and going to the end of World War II.
About the Author: Ralph L. Stephenson, BS, MS, PE, is a professional environmentalist who recently retired from his position as the Environmental Manager of a multi-billion dollar engineering and construction company with worldwide operations and projects. He has traveled extensively and managed environmental issues for projects in dozens of countries. He is an internationally recognized expert in environmental science and technology, and is presently writing science fiction novels with the theme of climate change. These visionary novels give scientifically based projections of the effects of climate change and the configuration of the coming post-climate change world. This is his third non-fiction work. The other two are a graduate level engineering textbook and a book about the Bible, money and economics. All books are available on Amazon.com. The four science fiction novels currently available are: 1.The Confederation Galactica 2.Toy Boy and the Astrologer 3.The Second Expedition 4.The Tentacles of Time