CLINTON - It's never too late for an 1812 Overture.

Marjorie Devore recently had one, leading a group of more than 50 family, friends and well-wishers to Randolph Cemetery - in the sticks near Kenney - to honor Col. Andrew Wallace, a veteran of the War of 1812.

Making overtures to the past is something of an obsession for Devore, who lives in Clinton and is Wallace's great-great-granddaughter. She has traced aspects of her volatile cocktail of Scots-English-Irish ancestry - with just a dash of German - all the way back to circa 1200 and does nothing by halves. A kilted bagpiper led the procession to the grave of Wallace, who hails from the Irish side, and a marker was unveiled honoring his service to his country in the second, and much less well-remembered, war with the British.

"It really was a very nice celebration," said Marjorie Devore's husband, Ronald, whose personal roots also stretch back to the Emerald Isle. "My wife does have a calling for this whole genealogy thing, and I mean calling - she says she feels she's got these ancestors calling her to do this."

Marjorie Devore doesn't want to get all spiritual here, but she says she will often find an e-mail turns up out of the blue or she stumbles onto some serendipitous information just when she needed it as she digs in pursuit of a long-buried antique relative. "It's almost like it was planned that way," she said. "Like somebody is saying, 'Look here, look at this,' like they were leaving little clues."

A retired teacher, she does her genealogical homework so thoroughly because she says you can't truly know who you are until you understand the ancestral genes that gave you that grin, those eyes, this way of walking, that attitude. Already the regent for the DeWitt-Clinton Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, she jumped at the chance a year ago to join the Sangamon River Chapter of the U.S. Daughters of 1812, which honors family links to the men who did battle 193 years ago.

"Wallace lived a good life, fought for his country and he was a good husband and father, a farmer who lived to be 87 and outlived all but two of his 11 children," says Devore, who speaks like she met him. "I don't want him to be forgotten."

Even the food she served afterward at the Kenney Civic League Hall was spiced with flavors designed to feed memories from different aspects of Wallace's life. Guests dined on "Irish Rolled Steak," "Potatoes Presbyterian," "Ulster Scones" and "Pro-Libertate Cake," reflecting the Wallace Latin family motto "For Liberty." There also was a "Methodist Salad," as some of Wallace's kids ended up going that route.

"I wanted to make people want to be there," says Devore. "I wanted to make it special."

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@;herald-review.com or 421-7977.