In my parent's house there is a black tin box with old fashioned flowers on it. I honestly don't remember the origin of the box. It might be a hundred year old heirloom or maybe my mother got candy in it one Christmas in the seventies. I don't have a clue. But I do know what's inside the box. Items from our family. Old things. Copies of marriage certificates, family tress, a pair of ancient reading glasses, a string of jet beads. Among these strange and awesome clues to our heritage is a family tree that bears the rather remarkable words next to a woman's name "A horse ran off with her". Her birth is noted. Her siblings and parents and thier descendants are all neatly alligned in their own little off-shoot forks but her own death is only "A horse ran off with her." There is no date, no information as to whether a body was recovered or when, how old she was when this happened, if they looked for her or even where this occurred. Were her parents frantic or did they assume she would reign her horse in and be home shortly? Was she small or an adult? Did she have a beau who searched in the woods even months after she disappeared? Did her parents put out a grave marker for her? Was there a search party? Did her mother set a place for her at the table for years afterward? Is her skeleton out there somewhere waiting to be found and puzzled over? Did she die at all? Might she have had amnesia and never knew who she was? Did she go onto marry, have children, grow rich, turn into a lady of the evening? Did she marry a Vanderbilt? Did she take up opera? Did she move out west as a mail-order bride? Maybe she knew who she was and pretended she had amnesia to escape a marriage being forced upon her?
A horse ran off with her....it stirs my imagination.
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