I got a few chuckles from James Carroll’s discovery that his ancestor wasn’t quite who he thought he was (“How family lore shapes character,” Op-ed, Oct. 8). My family was always quite proud of being descendants of Samuel Huntington, a signer of the Declaration of Independence — so proud that my grandfather, father, brother, son, and numerous other relatives have Huntington as a middle name.
We were all quite pleased with the idea until some crummy genealogy researcher (me) found out that ol’ Sam died childless.
Oh well, he was still a great man.