In 1959 I wrote a really good paper for Phillip Harth on Swift's Campaign against Marlborough

I have not looked at it in years, but I remember that at the ending I quote Sarah Churchill and comment that what she said had just the right sting in the tail. I enjoyed her tremendously in 1959, and only in the 21st century have learned that we both descend from Sir Thomas Leigh, the mayor who was in charge of Elizabeth's coronation, me a lot more steps down. He is my 13th Great Grandfather, which puts him in a class of a few hundred over 16,000 men. You can think of him as one in 16,000 plus, but I think much more familiarly about him. After all, that's a nice portrait of him we can look at. Now, I have been doing floor exercises for months now to documentaries about World War 2. Much of that time I was still in denial and not looking at any modern news at all. I was waiting for impeachable offences to be acknowledged as such. And my admiration for Winston Churchill has risen. Forget Gallipoli. He inspired the British when they needed inspiration. So I checked Geni and it says that through my mother's Scots ancestors I am his 10th cousin once removed. But what about Sir Thomas Leigh? Churchill is his 11th Great Grandson and I am his 13th Great Grandson. How many cousins does that make us in addition to the 10? Now, all this is fun, but in the last weeks in the daytime I have been looking up family blockaders (meaning moonshine runners) and have dozens of stories, hundreds, really, of 6th and 7th cousins in North Carolina and adjacent states. Some of them were notable fellows, and all of them ornery to the core. My folks. And in case you wondered, yes, double l Phillip. What a great teacher he was.