THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - CLAN CANABY

The Mavericks were related to the Canaby family on their mother's side.  (This is not to say her maiden name was Canaby, just that she was related to them.)  The Canabys were an old Southern family who owned slaves before the Civil War.  Many of the descendents of those slaves carried the Canaby name after their emancipation and some of them were of the same bloodline as their owners.  

As some of their children migrated north after gaining their freedom, the family name was corrupted to becoming "Canby".  (This would make Archie Bunker's housekeeper Ellen Canby a distant relative to the tall dark strangers known as the Mavericks.)

One of Bart Maverick's older cousins on that side of the family was Fenton Canaby, who gained notoriety near the end of the Civil War for leading a disasterous wagon train in which everybody else died.  (Tired of his Captain Bligh-like rules, the families on that train knocked him out and left him behind.  Then they struck out in the direction he told them would lead to catastrophe.)  Although about a decade older than Bart, he could still be considered Bart's "identical cousin".  Had they been the same age, one would be hard-pressed to tell them apart.

Rescued from life as a near-savage desert rat by a wagon train led by Chris Hale in the early 1870s, Fenton fell in love with a passenger making the trip West, Lucy Garrison.  (Lucy's great-nephew, Patrick Garrison, would work as a reporter for the New York Daily Record during the "Roaring" 1920's.)

The family tree begun by Fenton and Lucy would lead to the birth of Cinnamon Carter in 1932.  And she would have a daughter given up for adoption named Helena.  (Helena would die in 1999 during an atomic fuel dump explosion at one of the secret lunar colonies.)

So through Fenton and Lucy Canaby, I'm declaring this a theory of relateeveety that links one episode of 'Wagon Train' to 'Maverick', 'Mission: Impossible', 'Space: 1999', 'The Roaring 20's', and 'Archie Bunker's Place'.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Wagon Train' - "The Fenton Canaby Story"
• 'Maverick'
• 'Mission: Impossible'
• 'Space: 1999'
• 'The Roaring 20's'
• 'Archie Bunker's Place'

BCnU!