My mom started showing symptoms that we noticed about the age of 40. Finger twitches and losing her balance and she always had a fierce temper that seemed to be out of control at times. Dad said that that was present from even the beginning of their marriage. Mom is now 57 and has progressed quite a bit.

Mom refused to be rational about many things and she even had my sister at home in 1981 having never seen a doctor and daddy delivered my sister. She saw a doctor for the first time in 1997 after many years of me begging her to find out what was going on. I told her "what if your children can get it too?" Although I did not think that was a possibility I was very much mistaken! It was a huge slap in the face for us. When mom saw the doctor the woman kept watching me like she was looking for something and she asked mom if there were other children. I tested negative but my sister had to wait until she was 18. She had won a 37,000 dollar college scholarship at age 17 when she graduated but sank into such a deep depression that when she did go to college she droped out after four weeks. Six months later she tested negative but she is still in deep depression three years later.

I decided to find out where it came from. My grandmother died in a car wreck at age 60 with no known symptoms and grandpa at age 82 of heart failure. All his life he walked with a "gate" and people would say you could not tell when he was drunk or sober. My grandmother had a very mean father who beat them but he died at age 45 of T.B. his wife was in an insane assylum several times before she died of the same disease in her forties. Family members say he beat her so badly so many times it drove her insane.

Here are my immediate family names DAVIS, RICHARDSON, LAMB, BRYANT, DOWNS, PARKER, BOUCHER, SHADWICK, DUNCAN, OLDHAM. If anyone has member with the same connection please contact me. Does anyone know the surnames of the original immigrants to the U.S.?
Holly Kassinger Johnson