A verbatim email I received, which shows the virality of the Internet at its best.

Dear Hannah,

Yesterday, I was searching for Kidwell (Zedekiah 1806-1880) descendants and found your nice Mar 2013 article of your grandmother Geraldine Potts.

Then I find her Feb 2014 obituary.  I believe Zedekiah Kidwell was a son of Thomas Kidwell and had a sibling of Frances Kidwell Waters (1817-1864).   

Thomas Kidwell married Feb 18 1801 in Loudoun Co VA to Elizabeth Freast. In the 1940s, two relatives who were researching first generation Johannes Furst/Fierce determined that Elizabeth was a granddaughter of Johannes Furst and daughter Christian Fierce.  At that time in late 1700s and early 1800s, there were various spellings of the last name. 

Christian’s children left Loudoun and moved westward and the male children took the spelling of Fierce.  The research in 1940 identified other children of Christian, one of which was my ancestor Conrad Fierce (abt 1777-1840).

I think Thomas died before 1820 and I have found his wife Elizabeth moved west with her daughter Frances Kidwell Waters. (Zedekiah was a witness to the 1839 marriage of Frances to Elmore Waters.  Also, when Zedekiah married again in 1878, a Loudoun County researcher shows his parents as Thomas and Elizabeth)

Your ancestors from Zedekiah to you are as follows:

Zedekiah Kidwell and Mary Ropp

  Samuel Kidwell and Henrietta Shaffer

     Linda Kidwell and Walter Potts

        Geraldine Potts and Robert James

           Linda James and Marty Hager

I have never been in contact with anyone living In Loudoun County about ancestry.   I didn’t notice until yesterday about who wrote the article.  Since 2000, I have added about 20,000 names to a first generation Johannes Furst/Fierce family tree maintained by another descendant who had about 1,000 names.  Of that number, about 1,000 names are from Frances Kidwell and Elmore Waters. 

I link articles of living or recently living Fierce descendants to other Fierce descendants.  I will be linking your interesting article in emails to others.

Since you have a gmail address at the end of the article, then I wanted to give you a heads up in case a Fierce descendant contacted you.  Also, I found your 2011 interview online (youtube) with Harmon Killebrew.  This past year, I have now seen baseball at all of the 30 Major League Cities.