Jesse F. Kester (1851 - 1901)

My father had found the family relationship very early in his life, he worked construction with his step-grandfather (real grandfather died during the 1917 Flu outbreak). This was of course long before DNA. They had wrote letters back and forth, it took a few years, and I am sure some checking by Jesse's part of the family that my father was not just con trying to get in on any other Kester line's family money. But for years when I was young, not attending school yet, and going to work everyday with my father, I would open the mail and take it to where it needed to go, and a couple times a year, we would get a box from Kester Solder, no invoice and no order form on my grandpa's business board. I did not ever know at the time who any of those other Kester's were, or that Jesse Kester had passed away when he did, which was long before I was born. But we kept getting a lot of the letters typed on Kester Solder letterhead. I even got an xmas gift one year that was a Solder kit, the gun, those older heavy kind that looked like a gun, that was even stamped with Kester Solder on it. And of course a complete set of all types of solder rolls. When my parents retired and started motorhomeing around the United States, they had stopped in, pre-arranged, and had a tour of one of the plants of Kester Solder back east someplace, and then had dinner out with some members of the Kester family in Jesse's line. I wish I had kept and never lost or allowed my younger siblings to screw with my tools, but I wish I still had that solder gun, and I wish all those letters, invoices, etc. had been kept. That is my little two cents worth on it. And thank you for sending the email off to me and letting me know. Oh, ps and when DNA did start, I had my father do one kit from his hospital bed, and I have done two. They do show by name and family trees, that the two Kester families are related. I did send out some letters, but I have never got any answers back. Thanks again, Virgil