AFLOAT IN GENEALOGY

Hmm. I almost forgot to enter a float myself!

Of course mine would be entitled “West in New England”
and the sides of the float would be painted to make it look like
one of the log jams I’d see on the Androscoggin River when
we visited up home. My grandfather Floyd E. West Sr. and
his father Philip Jonathan West worked around the lumber
business in their lives.

There’d be a large map of Massachusetts and Northern New
England (so far there is no evidence of any connection to
Connecticut or Rhode Island.) with three ships touching the
shore: The Mayflower at Plymouth, another 17th century
sailing ship to the north of Boston to represent my Essex
County ancestors of the Great Migration, and a 19th century
steamer between at Boston to represent my Irish McFarlands
and Whites and German Offlinchers.

My West ancestors would stand in a line down the center of
the float with the Elusive John Cutter West shrouded in a
cloud of steam(no smoking!!) since nothing is known of the
family before him, and off to either side would stand members
of the other branches of the family: Abbott, Ames, Barker,
Benson, Barrows, Coburn, Dunham, Edson, Ellingwood,
Griffith, Haskell, Hastings, Houghton, Laughton, Packard,
Richardson, Upton, and the others.

When the line reached my father, he would be joined by my
mother. Behind her would stand the assembled McFarlands
Whites and Offlinchers.

And at the front of the float would be my sister and my
brother in law’s family as well as my brother’s.

There’d be small model buildings as well to represent what
sort of work they’d done in life: a sawmill, a smithy, and a
farmhouse for my New England lines and a small elevated
railway train model to since John McFarland helped in
the construction.

And from a speaker in the back, there will issue the strains
of “Hot Cross Buns.”

As played on a flutaphone.