Pakled:

(Under the category of waaaaaay too much information)

Fresno wasn't around during the 'great uprising' . . . it started out as a water stop for the railroad in the 1870's and by the end of that decade there were 7 bars and 100 prostitutes here (or was it the other way around) along with lotsa card sharps, outlaws and various bandits ... by the 1880's the Whitneys had settled here and so too the Shannons at which time the town got cleaned up a bit (I'm not saying that there was a correlation but knowing myself I wouldn't be a bit suprised if ther was). John and Patrick both had fought in the Civil War as sargents in the Union army. John was my great grandfather on my mother's side. His daughter  Ellen was my grandmother. she married William Whitney the Civil Engineer.  

My great grandfather  on my father's side was a mule skinner for the South. there are stories of him taking on as many as five adversaries at once in bars and coming through it without a scratch, but that's heresay handed down to my grandmother Mary Grafton who had a bit of Scotch in her (sometimes more than others) and who was born in Lousiana and moved to Texas where she met my grandfather James and who was known to fabricate some pretty fratured fairy taled and I ain't talkin about her knowing how shape steel - but if you ever tryed to stare her down you'd believe she could bent iron bars with her eyes alone . As I don't recall my great grandfather' s  given name it's sort of hard to verify anything about him . . . sad. And we don't talk about the Graftons(don't know why). I only saw a picture of my grandfather James once - taken around 1914 (the year my father was born) and I only found that out as I couldn't remember posing for a picture with a cowboy hat on. He too fought in WWI and died around 1919 as a result of the Flu that was going around. She moved to Fresno around that time and as a widow, totally corrupted all of Fresno and it's surroundings - according to my mother scotch wesn't her onl;y vice but I don't think My mother and Mary ever really got along ... so anyway eventually  my parents met got married WW2 happened  my dad fought in it, Korea happened my cousin Ralph got killed with the first Marine Divison at Chosin Reservoir and two weeks later I was born, did many of the same things Ralph did but a little further South and I didn't get killed came home went to college got shot in the leg (fractured tibia) walked down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon eight weeks later ... and the rest is as you might say is history.

... Now what were you saying about the North? . . . some of my ancestors weren't listening - personally though, I suspect Patrick just forgot to bring along his reading glasses.