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| Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall. The fellow standing in that lifeboat is GSL ancestor Degory Priest eager to whet his whistle at a local tavern and chat up a few 'townies'. Wikipedia |
My mother's cousin confirmed via online research, what was often talked about at family reunions, that we hail from one of the Mayflower Pilgrims, Degory Priest The 400th Anniversary of the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock is coming up in 2020. Don't think for a minute GSL won't be crashing that party strutting around like a bantam rooster burnishing his Degory Priest credentials like he owns the joint.
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| Stephen Foster is known as "the father of American music" who died penniless...an unfortunate habit of the most talented men up GSL's family tree. |
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| Another strong willed woman: my maternal grandfather's grandmother Lucinda Douglas Cooper (LDC) who lived to be 97, When my grandparents were first married back in the late 1930s, she offered to pay everybody's way if they would take her by car out to Yellowstone National Park which she'd always wanted to see. My grandparents loved telling the story of returning to their car from gathering provisions to discover the 93 year old LDC fighting off a grizzly bear with her cane who was trying to get at one of the fragrant picnic baskets next to her in the back seat. She looks like a tough cookie doesn't she? |
The Den would love to hear of any interesting ancestors running up your family tree!
Ancestors are such interesting beings, aren’t they. We were just discussing the “deprivations” we’re feeling as our kitchen is stripped to the echoes, disappointing us as we walk in by instinct for ice, or water or to put something away, and find the usual conveniences disconnected, lying forlorn along a floor tarp, or completely disappeared, carried out in bits by the demo men on Saturday. My Mammaw often spoke of her Mama, mourning that she did not have the “luxury” of a glass of tea with ice in it, or a bath which didn’t require lifting buckets up the back steps.
ReplyDeleteYour GG to the nth power sounds a treat---the determined chin and wise eyes were probably what GOT her to that dear old age, along with the courage to fight a bear. Now, SHE’S one of the ones we’d call remarkable in the South---we trot out our unusual kin, our odd ones, our eccentrics (though I’ve been told you have to be rich to be eccentric---we poor folks are just STRANGE) and set them right up in the parlor, true to life and twice as memorable.
Two of my own---one on each “side”---are the most memorable to me---not including the Aunt with a bordello, past the by-marriage hermit who was his own walking art exhibit, and the Uncle who carried on a decades-long correspondence with Miss Gene Tierney.
Two of my most memorable are the far-back GRANDfather who was transported from England in 1734, for theft of spice and cake.
http://lawntea.blogspot.com/2009/11/two-nutmegs-and-pound-of-gingerbread.html
And a tragic, seldom-spoken-of Great-Great, who had had entirely enough of trying to get her family through the Civil War alone, and who snapped in a particularly grim fashion. And swear, I admire the heck out of that woman, so there.
http://lawntea.blogspot.com/2009/01/dark-path-viii.html
rachel
Loved reading those posts regarding your ancestors Dear Rachel. Beautifully written and riveting. I would have helped your seldom spoken of Great Great saddle up that horse but taken the mount and drug that pervert to town in search of a hanging judge and exampled for all to see.
Delete...by the way Rachel, the Gene Tierney family were neighbors of my family in Westport and recall hearing Auntie J speaking of the challenges GT faced that were the talk of the town back then.
DeletePS I seem to have cheated Great +++ Grandfather Milstead out of sixty years of life, family (and probably a wife in the interim) and prosperity in this New World. The actual year of his transportation-for-miscreance was 1674, making our family's residence in America longer than I said. No harm done, but think of the chunk of family history left out.
DeleteMy Paternal Great Grandmother was half Cherokee (none of that Indian Princess stuff that's always the case---just a nice woman who married GGG Lotha-on-my-Daddy's-side). So Daddy, ever Politically Incorrect, and technically as well, always joked that "Half of us came over on the Mayflower, and the other half was here to meet 'em."
r
Thanks for the update Rachel G-G+Grandfather Milstead earned those 60 years we almost cheated him out of. Those Cherokees did a lot of inter-marrying back in those days.
DeleteGSL,
ReplyDeleteI just had a peek at Miss T. on Wiki, and am just now aware of her troubled life---I suppose in my childish way, I thought every letter went to Hollywood, and the replies came from there, as well. Just to think of the same postman carrying a missive from faraway Mississippi, and delivering it to a mailbox just down the street from your own Aunt. My Goodness. Surely everything was routed through agents, but it's a lovely thought.
One of his autographed pictures was of her in black and white, holding the long glass stem of a perfume applicator to her throat---the start of my lifelong love of those intricate bottles and atomizers.
Now I see where you get your libertarian streak. Cornish stock the mayflower passenger was. Cornish people are the only area within England that still has an Independence Party! They still have s strong identity and hence the top duchy as in duke of Cornwall aka prince Charles has taken that title to originally quell rebellion!
ReplyDeleteI need to do more research regarding ancestor Degory Priest's Cornish background and I have often heard of the peculiar Cornish character alluded to. DP was a London hatmaker prior to heading to Holland and thence the New World.
DeleteI can feel DP's Libertarianism and love of lids coursing through my veins.
Oh GSL, how exciting! My mother has done a lot of work on family history in recent years and has turned up evidence that on her side of the family we go back to original Dutch settlers in New York! Whee! So it turns out I am a native New Yorker after all, which makes a lot of sense to me, actually. Having learned this only recently, after nearly 20 years of living in the Big Apple, I am in a hot hurry to work on a disgusting sense of entitlement, that I find in so many born and bred New Yorkers, and which it now appears I am entitled to as well. Can't wait to start strutting down Fifth Avenue swinging those elbows wide and conveying the feeling of, 'You gotta problem? I'm walking here! And BTW, my family was here LONG LONG before yours was!' I am going to have so much fun with this, let me tell you. xx
ReplyDeleteThat's the spirit Jill ! Now feel free to join me at the Mayflower 400th Gala as GSL will be holding court at the Degory Priest table strategically selected for it's close proximity to bar and dance floor.
DeleteI want more EJS coverage of Met Gala...I saw a dense concentration of really poor taste...and AW did well overall.
Love Stephen Foster! I missed the Mayflower by one boat. Am descended from Kenelm Winslow, whose older brother Gilbert was on the Mayflower (I think Kenelm came on the 2nd boat) and signed the Mayflower compact. I have never been, but I plan to go sometime in the next year!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Wendy regarding your Winslow Boy. I think you have enough meat on the Mayflower bone to join me at the Mayflower 400th Gala.
DeleteI'd like to see our David McCullough take the Mayflower on as his next project.
Apparently my aunt's aunt was married to Vincent Price. Other than that it's a lot of bankers stemming from Swedish stock in Minnesota. I had one devastating handsome great uncle who collected heiress wives but nobody off the Mayflower.
ReplyDeleteI never thought Vincent Price much interested in women (or had children) but he was thrice married with all of them interesting in their own right according to Wiki. There certainly is a lot of Swedish stock up in Minnesota hence the Minnesota Vikings football team.
DeleteWe'd like to know more about devastatingly handsome great uncle the heiress collector!
Direct descendant on my Father's side to Daniel Boone! That line leads to Abraham Lincoln! My Dad loved following the genealogy of the Boone family. Ol' Daniel got around and had a squaw in every teepee!
ReplyDeleteOh how I'd love to be in Daniel Boone's line! I had that same leather coat Fess Parker wore on the TV show but didn't yield me much teepee action. Honest Abe also a Giant but not with quite the same cache to young boys as Daniel Boone.
DeleteLove all this family history - we actually know so little about our, mainly because my grandfather was economical with the truth
ReplyDeleteMy paternal Grandfather 'Pete' after a few drinks could tell some whoppers. He was quite an athlete but even as a boy knew he didn't run the 100 yard dash in 9.6 seconds...making him co-world record holder with Jesse Owens.
DeleteInteresting history GSL. My mother's family were also Cooper's, from County Cork Ireland.
ReplyDeleteHi Donna,
DeleteYou can really find out so much online these days. I had very few scraps of info up my dad's side but have made some fascinating discoveries.