Family inheritance

When you talk of a family inheritance most of us think of a house, stocks or grandma's jewelry. In my family, skin cancer is what has been passed down from one generation to another.

Having red hair, fair complexion and growing up in Florida sure didn't help, but my genes would have caught up with me, even in Seattle. I knew my grandfather died from it in 1965 and most close relatives have had more than one but only recently found a record that my great great great great grandmother died from it.

I was reading the Revolutionary War pension file of Louisa Gabriel Willis Fulford. It has a December 10, 1849 affidavit from Samuel Leffers, Carteret County Justice of the Court of Pleas stating that Louisa had been confined to her bed for over three years because of Cancerous Affection of the Face. Louisa died eight months after the affidavit was written.