Hanford . . .

"Hanford" was my brother's middle name.  It was my grandfather's middle name as well.  Stanley Hanford Warner.  He started out in life as a janitor at Strous/Adler Corporation (makers of "Smoothie" undergarments) in New Haven, Connecticut.  When he retired, he was a "custodial engineer."  He had carved his initials on all his tools- "S. H."  I used to (still do) tell people that his nickname was "Shush . . ."

He was the first person I ever new who wore trifocals.  That's bifocals, with the bifocal part of the lens repeated at the top, so you can look up, as well as down, to see close up.  He said he got them because he got tired of leaning so far back to be able to see through the bifocal lens that he'd fall off the ladder . . .

Shush was in the last generation of people listed in a book called "The Descendents of Andrew Warner," which my brother Ken found when we were still quite young.  Shush had a great uncle named Hanford Warner.  Hanford Warner, in a life that now seems terribly politically incorrect, once sold an act to P.T. Barnum (yes, that P. T. Barnum!) called "The Wild Men from Borneo."

Here's a picture of Uncle Hanford, and the Wild men:

Or, maybe that's Lyman, Hanford's dad, or Henry, Hanford's son.  Apparently, Lyman owned Waino and Plutanor, who were actually the Davis brothers, Hiram and Barney, having purchased them from their mother, and left them to Hanford, who left them to Henry. (I'm not aware of any other family members, past or present, that ever owned anyone else . . .)

And here's a link to the Wild Men from Borneo on Wikipedia.  When we were little, Shush had Plutanor's raincoat hanging in his garage, so my brother used to tell me, though I personally never saw it.  All of which sort of puts me six, or maybe seven, degrees from P. T. Barnum . . . which is way cooler than owning people.

P.S.  I never called him "Shush" to his face . . . I always called him "grampa."