What you hold in your hands is a slice of humanity sharing one other characteristic - the surname Trott. It's more or less of the "polite school of literature," in other words aimless reading. And if the author slides into details of the New England branches, among which his ancestors may have been hanging or hanged, it is chiefly for their stories, too. Nor can he keep on that track for long - the rest of the Trotts in the world are too hard to resist. Any family name moderately researched would turn up thousands of knots and connections to famous and notorious persons, members with wide ranging gifts, talents, adventures, accomplishments, and personalities -- and lots of remarkable stories, interesting, humorous or full of pathos. The stories and anecdotes keep humanity interesting. This has certainly been the case with the Trotts. The astute reader will note the paucity of footnotes and references. The author feels he is already asking a good deal of flexibility from his audience and that any heavy going would bring many readers to a halt. For that reason, the references are few and mostly in the text. However, in these days when universal knowledge is accessible through the internet (if only one can winkle it out from under the heaps of widespread misinformation) the avid reader will hunt down most of our sources by that means. It might be argued this is as much a scrap-book as a literary work. Some might even disparage it as the contents of a genealogist's waste-basket. It is true much of it has arisen from the author's own genealogical labors, which involved trying to bridge intriguing gaps - find "missing links" as it were - in his own lineage. Although he confesses to spending far too much time perusing records about miscellaneous Trotts, he testifies few of these were waste-basket-fodder. All human beings are interesting - some very good, some very bad - and most, a lot like us. Thus this offering on the subspecies Trott.

Jim Trott is a poet and writer who has worked as a mechanic and carpenter, with roots in Montana and New England. He resides in Philadelphia with his wife Roseann. The two of them entertain grandchildren and take brief forays into mission work in Belize. Beyond knowing far more about his ancestors than anyone else cares to hear, Jim is a woodworker and mushroom hunter, a blessed husband, and braggish about his descendants.