Tag Archives: Serendipity

Churchill’s Mayflower line

American History, Family Stories, Mayflower 2020, News, Research Methods, ,
Sir Winston Leonard (Spencer-) Churchill (1874-1965)

Last year I made a post teasing about an upcoming article I had written that showed, with the assistance of Y-DNA evidence, a Mayflower descent for Prime Minister Winston Churchill (among other notable figures). The journey began in 2017 when I was at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. When at our booth, we get a chance to meet lots of genealogists, members of American Ancestors and non-members alike. It is always a fun chance during some down time to discuss problems or recent findings. Continue reading Churchill’s Mayflower line →

Notorious

Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,

There are some great lines in one of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey stories about the way his “persistent and undignified inquisitiveness,” his “habit of asking silly questions,” leads him to pursue anomalies to a conclusion. In this story, “The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question,” he is hunting for a jewel thief in the drawing rooms of Mayfair, and he ends the story both in triumph and in trouble: Continue reading Notorious →

Outdoor classroom: Part Two

American History, Family Stories, Mayflower 2020, , , ,

It was a glorious late October day in Plymouth. If only that could be said without qualification but, alas, we are still in the midst of Covid … mandatory face mask zones and digital signs warning of fines for scofflaws. But the sun was shining and a fresh breeze wafted in from the harbor as I resumed my lessons in the outdoor classroom, determined, as I have been all year despite the restrictions, to make the most of the Mayflower quadricentennial.

There has been something of a silver lining with the virus in that the explorations that might have taken me farther afield have kept me close to home. Continue reading Outdoor classroom: Part Two →

Tethered branches

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,

The other day, while rolling about in a school bus through the streets of our fair town, my co-worker – a vociferous and practical-minded young woman we’ll call Cathy – chided me, saying, “Why that’s just impossible! You think you are related to everyone!” Well, I have to admit, I stammered a bit at this, and wasn’t quite sure what to say. Cathy’s no-nonsense attitude made what I wanted to extol, an overly simplified explanation of “We are all possibly related to each other – it’s just a matter of proving how,” feel a bit too dumb in the moment. Continue reading Tethered branches →

A genealogy of a pizza

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , ,
Gus Guerra at Cloverleaf.

I love learning about the history of food. Just as genealogy does, learning about the evolution of food and food culture feeds my desire to fully understand how the people who came before us lived on a day-to-day basis. Recently, I did a deep dive into one particular food after my boyfriend and I got take-out pizza from Avenue Kitchen + Bar in Somerville, Massachusetts. We ordered one of their “Detroit-style” pizzas, which neither of us had ever heard of. We were absolutely blown away by how insanely delicious it was. This, of course, necessitated a whole deep dive into figuring out what exactly a Detroit-style pizza is. The descriptions we found online aligned with our own dining experience: thick-crusted, chewy, rectangular pizza, topped with cheese and pepperoni, drizzled with sauce, featuring crispy, crunchy edges. When I read that Detroit-style pizza could be traced back to one man, I was thoroughly intrigued, and immediately felt the need to set down my dinner plate and learn more. Continue reading A genealogy of a pizza →

Fireside stories

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , , , , ,
Corstorphine Old Parish Church, near Edinburgh. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

As a kind of sequel to my post on “kinbot,” the medieval Scottish practice of making amends after slaying a kinsman, I can offer two stories of Livingston family murderesses … and the very different impression their acts made upon their contemporaries. The first took place more than a century after Sir John Bruce was “slaughtered” by his Menteith kinsmen and concerns the Livingstons of Dunipace, from which family the Rev. John Livingston’s mother was descended. Continue reading Fireside stories →

The absentminded priest

Collections, Family Stories, Research Methods, , , ,
Domenica Peveri alias Plate baptism. Click on image to expand it

This is a tale of how curiosity, knowledge of local Italian sources and conditions, and focused research strategies uncovered an error in church records and solved a genealogical mystery. Last year I finally discovered that my immigrant great-great-grandfather Antonio Pugni (1840-1913) was from the village of Coli in Piacenza, Italy. Fortunately, Coli parish church records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths date to 1718, and in some instances to the 1690s, and can be accessed directly on FamilySearch.org. Civil registration records of births, marriages, and deaths begin in 1806 and are also online at FamilySearch, but images can be viewed only at any of the 5,000+ Family History Centers worldwide. Continue reading The absentminded priest →

Presidential generations

American History, Family Stories, News, , ,
President John Tyler. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The news of the recent death of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr., aged 95, grandson of 10th U.S. President John Tyler (1790-1862), leaves just his younger brother, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, aged 91, as the last grandchild of a president who was born during the administration of George Washington, and whose term in office began twenty years before the Civil War. I’ve always been fascinated when hearing that John Tyler had two living grandsons and would occasionally confirm their longevity. The reason President Tyler has such extended generations is due to a second marriage at fifty-four years old, in the last year of his presidency, which resulted in seven children born between 1846 and 1860, the youngest when Tyler was seventy years old. Continue reading Presidential generations →

Summer spots: Part Three

American History, Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, , ,
“World’s End” in Hingham

Finishing up this series on places my family enjoyed during our socially distant summer, I move now from the North Shore to the South Shore, to “World’s End” in Hingham. This Trustees property was designed by the well-known landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in 1890 at the request of owner John Reed Brewer, with the intention of creating a 163 home residential subdivision. While the drives were cut, the development never came to fruition, and the land, consisting of four coastal drumlins extending into Hingham Harbor (with views of the Boston skyline), has been preserved as a setting for recreation since 1967, after the land was donated by John’s grandson, the poet [John] Wilmon Brewer (1895-1998). Continue reading Summer spots: Part Three →

Who am I?

American History, Family Stories, ,
Redwood grove, courtesy of the National Park Service.

My surname comes down to me from a ten-generation line of Grovers, all of whom have lived in America. The first in this line is Edmund Grover (1600-1682), who emigrated from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony some time between 1628 and 1633.[i] His ancestry in England is not known with certainty, so ten generations is all that can be claimed. But ten generations are enough to say that I am thoroughly a Grover. Biologically speaking however, Edmund’s bloodline has been diluted at each generation by spouses who have contributed equally to who I am. I carry Edmund’s surname, but only a vanishingly small percentage of his blood. Continue reading Who am I? →