Since high school, I have had a very interesting and varied life and have
met a number of fascinating people. The chief factors responsible for this have been my music career and my 40+ year association
with Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and the political ideology of libertarianism.
I have also been fascinated
since school days with genealogy, and in 1978 my late father, Eldon K. Bissell, and I began working on our own family history
in earnest. We found that the family details were well known back to my great-great-grandfather Pierce B. Bissell and his
wife Sarah Van Boskirk Bissell, but there were large gaps in our genealogy prior to them, so we set about to remedy those
gaps and found much fascinating information and many new cousins. Since Dad's death in 1984, my sister, Julie Bissell
Tupker, and I continued this work and have made numerous breakthroughs and discoveries on the Bissell, Van Boskirk, and related
families.
Reflecting these different strands of interest, some the numerous kinds of material to be included here
are: (1) issues of my journals Bissell Histories and Mysteries and Van Boskirk, with an "O"! (2)
chapters from The Bissells of Barstow, which I am co-writing with Julie, (3) chapters from my book, Van
Boskirk, with an "O"!, (4) continuations of family lineages from E. P. Jones' genealogy of the descendants
of Captain John Bissell, (5) continuations of the genealogy of the Rhode Island Bissells, as included in an appendix of the
aforementioned book by E. P. Jones, (6) autobiographical essays, and (7) essays about acquaintances in the music business
(a la Reader's Digest "My Most Unforgettable Character").
Happy reading, everyone!