Page 57 - Demo

To Our
Unspeakable
Grief
The purposeful life of Jabez Smith, Jr.
by Glenn Arthur Hennessey
The first time I passed through the tall wooden gates
of Anderson House it was 2003. When I sat down in the Original Library that day with Assistant Secretary General Skid Masterson to discuss the possibility of taking over the design of Cincinnati Fourteen, I couldn’t have imagined a future in which I’d be writing this article.
I soon began working with Jack Warren on the design of the journal and after eight years I approached him about joining the staff as their graphic designer. To my great fortune Jack took me on, and since that time I have only benefited from working alongside our whip-smart historians and the dedicated members.
You can imagine my astonishment when it was discovered by accident—sixteen years after that first meeting at Society headquarters—that I was eligible for membership. I will forever be grateful to Arch O’Reilly (Mass.) who asked this fellow Irishman about his lineage. When I told him I was sure my family had arrived only after the potato famine, he offered to do some digging for me.
Two days later Arch came back having found my fourth great grandfather, an officer who shared my mother’s maiden name and served in Connecticut during the Revolution. I was gobsmacked. Captain Jonathan Caulkins had participated in the capture of Burgoyne, was slapped with a sword by Benedict Arnold (who later apologized), and suffered a
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