Small World, Fate, etc. etc.

So my wonderful Step-dad, Mike, has been doing a lot of family tree-ing in the last few months. He's been finding all kinds of super cool connections and tracing both my mom's family and his family back really really far. This week, my mom e-mailed to tell me that he had discovered a Roxanna E. Conner, who was the older sister (by 3 years) of my maternal Grandma's great-grandfather (Lemuel Pinkney Conner). My mom nudged him to do a little more research on Roxanna, and it turns out that she was in fact Roxanna Elizabeth! She was the oldest of nine children, and she actually had eight children herself. Funny thing, she had seven girls and one boy. Further evidence that my family has to really stick it out to get a boy.

My mom pointed out that even through some ridicule, we stuck it out and named the baby formerly known as Hosey Roxanne Elizabeth, and we ended up one letter shy of a family name! Spooky. Technically, I chose Elizabeth as her middle name to honor my Dad's mom (we called her Gramma Zaic) who passed away while I was pregnant. But I'm even happier to realize that we (accidentally, or serendipitously) honored my Mom's side of the family, too! Now I can tell all those jerks who ask me if I named Roxanne for that song by the Police that her name is a family name. How nice!