In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week’s theme is, of course, “Love.” It is the perfect time to continue the Melcher family’s story. I’ve already written about Benjamin Morse Melcher, a sea captain living in Brunswick, Maine. His wife’s name was Emeline Sylvester Morse, daughter of Joseph Morse Jr. and Lucy Sylvester. They were first…
This week I’m going to jump back into the 52 Ancestors project with the suggested theme “At the Library.” I grew up going to the library at least weekly, if not more often. We moved around a bit during my childhood so the local library was sometimes large, sometimes small, even a bookmobile (library on…
The theme for week 51 of the 52 Ancestors project is “nice.” My association of the word “nice” at this time of year is with Christmas and being on Santa’s nice list. Joan Emily Avenell, my paternal grandmother, was born to Bertrand and Emily Thomas Avenell in January 1912 in Houston, Texas. She was the…
The theme for 52 Ancestor’s 49th week was “Winter.” I was looking through a box of family photos for winter scenes and I found this one: It’s the house my Seward grandparents lived in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1940’s. Like all snow scenes, it looks very peaceful. Then I turned it over and saw this note…
The 52 Ancestors theme for week 48 was “Next to Last” Two of my 3rd great-grandparents on my paternal grandfather’s side, Jasper Green and Angelina Frazier had eleven children together before Angelina died sometime between 1852 and 1860. Their 10th – next to last – child was Sarah Ann Green, called Sadie or Sadie Ann….
This week’s theme is “Thankful” Back in August, I went on vacation to mid-coast Maine. Every time I go, I am amazed by how much of my mother’s family history is intertwined in some of the small towns there. The little cottage that my great-great Aunt had built is about one hundred years old now…
The 52 Ancestors theme for week #46 is “Random fact.” When I got my Mayflower lineage from my cousin, one of the first surnames I noticed was Delano. “Like Franklin Delano Roosevelt” I thought. According to Wikitree, we are related through Phillippe (De Lannoy) Delano as 6th cousins 3 times removed. Like many descendants of…
52 Ancestors week 44 theme is “Bearded” and I have several bearded ancestors. Ora Philander Seward had a pretty good beard for example. So did another ancestor named George Douglass (below left) who was the father of Ada Barnum Douglass. The most impressive beard I found though belonged to an ancestor on my father’s side…
Week 42’s theme is “conflict.” I started this post a couple of weeks ago and then had to redo it after finding and reviewing a key source. A while back I wrote about my ancestor Reverend Jonathan Ellis. He followed in the pastoral footsteps of his father, Reverend John Ellis, though he went to Yale instead…
This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is “Cause of death.” It took me a while to come up with an idea for this week, then I remembered that this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Spanish flu pandemic. My great-grandmother Emily Thomas was born in Canterbury, England in 1879 to Henry Thomas and Minnie…