It has been a very noisy night and it doesn’t sound like it will stop anytime soon.

My plan tonight had been to walk to the park to watch the fireworks. Instead, I fell asleep earlier while it was quiet and woke up to bangs and booms as it got dark. I still am a bit jet lagged so hope it will get quiet soon so I can get back to sleep.

I have spent a fairly quiet day until just awhile ago. I spent time getting caught up on things at home and doing a bit of genealogy and history research.

One of the things I looked at was if I was related to any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I found that two of my ancestors were third cousins of William Ellery who represented Rhode Island.

In the picture above is my 3rd Great Grandmother Maria Chapman. It is her Great Grandparents who were cousins of William Ellery. We are all descendants of William Almy and Audrey Barlow who came to Massachusets in the 1630’s and eventually moved to Rhode Island.

I share common ancestry with a couple other signers, but the relationship is more distant. I have found that most of my ancestors at the time of the Revolutionary War were in frontier settlements as we tended to wander quite a bit. A trait that seems to have been handed down over time.

I did have a hot dog today as I had to do a bit of shopping at Target. So, I guess that I did have some traditional 4th of July food 🙂

Because the 4th of July is on a Wednesday this year we only get one day off for the holiday. If the 4th is on Tuesday or Thursday we will usually get two days off and if on Monday or Friday we at least get a three day weekend.

I have an early morning class to attend tomorrow, so hope it quiets down soon so I can get some sleep.

Steven