Right, so, I'm writing, like you do. (The Fairy Apocalypse. Seriously, how long did it take me to come up with that? Of course, once I'd written half the story, I was like, "Oh, you know who did fairy apocalypse? Robin McKinley in Sunshine." But mine is just fairies, and no vampires or anything else. And it's a proper apocalypse.)

Anyway, I need a last name for the neighbors. And I'm thinking about my grandparents' neighbors (of a sort; I don't think they lived closer than a mile away), the Guinnerguskys. Or are they the Ginnerguskis? The Gunnerguskys? The Guinner-Guskis? Something much more Polish than I'm capable of spelling, like... The Guighnergafhikis? (I'm bad at making up Polish phonemes; that looked pretty Irish, actually.)

I can't figure it out. So I start Googling. And you know what, "Guinnergusky" doesn't exist. Period. Or any variant I can think of. So I start Googling the name of the county, and maybe I'll stumble into a list of names.

Instead I find this:

"Clare County has had its troubles with lawless elements. Some of this conflict was generated by farmers in Grant and Sheridan Townships when Lumbermen took local government from their control. The Board of Supervisors retaliated by withholding funds for a new jail at Harrison and the sheriff was not compensated for transporting lawless men to jails in Midland or Osceola Counties. The County went feral following this interval."
From "A Brief History of Clare County" (italics mine)

Uhm. Okay.

Yes, of course, Michigan was once the frontier. I get that. And my grandfather and his brothers were called the Wild Cook Boys for a reason, having grown up in nearly lawless lumber camps and having a penchant for fighting (yes, my gentle, wonderful grandfather; it was shocking to find this out, and yet, it made perfect sense). But.

FERAL?

Cool.

The extremely talented redmomoko has undertaken to become my personal genealogist. I'm not sure how I lucked out there, other than I showed her some gravestone pictures I'd taken one day, and it just went from there. That's how I learned I was Dutch-Canadian at one key juncture, which was a fun revelation.

( In which I discover I am not the descendant (probably) of Cynthia Sleeper and Freedom Beede. )

In any case, Momoko managed to track the family back to Scotland in 1800, which is a total bonus to have my Celtic stock confirmed, and I think that there was some Irish confirmation in there, too, which is double bonus.