The six Blonger brothers also had three sisters: Elizabeth, who apparently died unmarried, Mary, the youngest and mother of five, and Julia, born second after Simon. We know that Julia had seven children by a man named Revoir, and that they disappeared from the public record when they moved east in 1892. Now we know why.
Thanks to DNA testing, we have reconnected with Julia’s branch of the tree and learned the reason they were so hard to find. Like Sam, Lou and the others, the Revoir family chose a new name—Rivers. Despite the similarity, revoir doesn’t mean river, of course; in French it means “to see again,” as in au revoir.