Excerpt from a letter written during World War II, from Aunt Flo Mann to her niece Emily White. I have written our cousin in Kansas to tell me all she knows about the Mann family. They came originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, and the name is really Munn, and there are three parts to these – an eastern, a southern and a western. Grampa Mann’s family came from Connecticut in the vicinity of Danbury. His mother was Lucy Prindle or some call it Pringle, and her niece was a teacher at one time in our parts – Emiline Prindle. Learn all you can about these families, also the Worden family and Captain Worden of the Monitor was a cousin of Grandpa Worden, and his picture looks enough like Edward Worden’s father to be a twin. Grandpa’s father was Leonard Worden. Grandma Mann (Pa’s mother), came from Ireland and when two yr. old, brought there by an older sister and was brought up in N. Y. City. She was married before she knew Grandpa Mann, had two children and one daughter was living when Pa was a boy. Catherine, was a good woman, the wife of Obadiah Bowe, whom she left and came home to her mother. Her husband followed her and they say took all her clothes away from her. She had a very beautiful daughter – Abby Kelly Bowe, who was drowned in the Erie Canal. Mr. Schall knew about her. Grandma Mann’s first husband was Thaddeus O’Warsaw Weapar. Pa’s father was Elisha Mann. Virginia (cousin?) told me quite a little about Robert Montross or Mondee (that is phonetic) do not know the correct way but the Montross galleries in N. Y. are from the same family, for Ma told me that they owned considerable valuable property in N. Y., but another member of the family got the deeds and that settled that question. Robert came from France with his French wife and daughter, and after the wife died, he married an Indian girl, whose son was the father of Grandpa Worden, and I have a photo of one of Grandpa’s uncle that looks like a chief in western garb. Some of the family show these features. Uncle Sandy had the nose and some of their features. Fanny Briggs and her sister Media had most pronounced Indian features. There was quite a family of this side. Grandma Worden was Dutch-Holland and spoke languages but not with a Dutch accent, yet she used to say their jingles for us, as well as Mother Goose. I can hear Grandma say trip trop a tronches when I think of her. She was such a dear and looked exactly like a grandma in a picture book. Hair parted in the middle – lace cap with rosettes over either ear – specks, a tight fitting waist with a large full skirt – always took your part but corrected you in her own way that made you so ashamed you were more than sorry and never would do such a thing again. She was such a dear, and Grandpa thought we were nearly perfect to hear him, yet he had his own way of correcting us – for Ma was the youngest of fifteen children and grandpa was born while Washington was president. He always called Uncle Sandy little Alec, and Aunt May B. his French lady. He was something great. I have quite a list of the Montross family but I have not gone over it in sometime, and would like to go over it regularly with you so we could get it all in order. Grandma Worden’s mother was Elizabeth Ostrander before marrying. So learn all you can about the Montross family, the Worden’s, the Southard family, the Mann family, the Prindle or Pringle, some call it, but think the first in correct. Grandma Mann came from Dublin or that vicinity and her maiden name was Boyle. She had a wealthy Uncle living in Mobile, Alabama, before the Civil War, and went down to be with him – an elderly man and when I was a schoolgirl, Web Clearwater – Grace knows who he was – told Pa there was money in the Surrogate’s office for his mother or her heirs but he would never investigate. Grandma’s niece was an organist in a large church when Aunt Fannie was first married. There seems to have been a pronounced musical strain all through Pa’s family on both the Boyle and the Mann side as well.