It is not always easy to trace the origin of an American family, even when the immediate progenitor did not begin life as a boot-black or a prospector, without so much as a "grub stake." The Ganos had been people of some education and some meansclergymen, merchants going to and from the West Indies, or home-keeping planters in the Southfor the little space of a hundred years before the Civil War. Further back than thatdarkness.