I think all family historians dream of stumbling across letters, diaries and journals that, at the very least, have a mention of one of their ancestors.
I have had a little luck in this area. A couple of journals have confirmed family relationships or events such as marriages or deaths for some of my ancestors. A letter published in a genealogy confirmed a parent-child relationship.
Surveyor George Washington mentioned stopping at an ancestor's inn on a couple of occasions!
Physical descriptions of ancestors have been a rarity. My Mom and uncle told me about their Uncle Jack, who tipped the scales at 400+ pounds. A couple of NYC histories mentioned "Wall Street John" Simmons, a tavern-keeper, who was reported to have been the "most corpulent man" in New York.
Now comes Thomas Treadway, an innkeeper, who was described by Dr. Alexander Hamilton as "a fat, pursy man who had large bubbies like a woman." Yikes! Talk about a physical description! Dr. Hamilton, on a later stop over, referred to the inn-keeper as his "old friend Treadway." It also seems that Thomas was in ill health.
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