Week 34: Chosen Family #52ancestors

Chosen Family.  This could be friends, people who married in, adoptees, or just people you raised without formal links.  In the context of this challenge, it could just be the family you chose to research or write about.  My first  thought was that I would talk about Dillard Hazelrigg Clark who was raised by my 4th great-uncle Nelson Gilderoy Prewitt.  Dillard made good, serving his country in both the Civil War and the First World War.  However, Nelson apparently was a slave-owner in Kentucky and even though I don't believe that ignoring these unpleasant facts gets us anywhere, I don't like thinking about them either.  The ownership of enslaved people has been the worst thing I've found out about my ancestors in this genealogical journey.  Despite this, I am going to attach a link to the story of Dillard Hazelrigg Clark, an honorable man, who was orphaned at an early age and then taken in by Nelson Prewitt  (who may have been a bit chagrined when Dillard joined the Union army during the Civil War, though I have no evidence either way).  It is a very American story, Dillard first serving as a very young private in the Union Army during the Civil War, eventually going to Westpoint, subsequent impoverishment, then the discovery of oil in the front yard (no more financial worries!), more service in the U.S. Army, finally to his death in San Diego, and final interment in Arlington National Cemetery.  A lot of the Ancestry trees show Dillard as Nelson's son, but that is sadly not true.  He is chosen family and I hope that the Prewitts did right by him.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Army/USMA/AOG_Reunions/61/Dillard_Hazelrigg_Clark*.html


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