"Genealogy: Where you confuse the dead and irritate the living."
Overall shape of our immediate ancestry
Three out of Patrick's four grandparents were born in Kentucky and spent most of their adult lives in Michigan. The fourth, his mother's mother, was born in Toronto of parents just off the boat from Cornwall, and her family moved to Michigan shortly after that. Patrick's mother's father's people, and his father's mother's people, were Appalachian merchants, farmers and laborers, a few prosperous, most not, descended from English, Scottish, and occasionally Irish immigrants to the mid-Atlantic colonies. Most of Patrick's father's father's people were descendants of some of the earliest English-speaking Catholics in North America, 17th-century immigrants to St. Mary's County, Maryland. The vast majority of these Maryland Catholic ancestors emigrated to north-central Kentucky in the 1780s and 1790s. Additionally, a small branch of Patrick's father's father's people appear to have been early Quaker immigrants to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Teresa is descended, through both of her mother's parents, from Mormons who became Mormon in the earliest days of Mormonism. Most of these people were, in turn, descended from well-documented (but rarely affluent) colonial-era families of the 17th and 18th centuries, the large majority of whom began in New England but a few of whom started instead in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Teresa's father was a convert to the Mormon church; his own paternal grandparents were first-generation immigrants from Denmark, and his maternal grandmother was the daughter of two Quebeçois who emigrated to Illinois. Teresa grew up in a large LDS family, several members of which were ardent genealogical researchers, so even in childhood she was aware of most of this -- except for the Quebec connection, which we learned about only around 2006.
Dates
We haven't used "double dates" in this database. Hal Bradley, who made the same decision for his own site, has a good explanation of the issues.
Quakers, famously averse to the pagan references contained in words like August or Saturday, mostly wrote dates out in numbers -- 8d 6m 1702, which in the pre-1752 world usually meant the 8th of August 1702. After the calendar change, 8d 6m 1772 would usually mean the 8th of June 1772. At any rate, this is how we generally translate these records, depending on what side of the calendar-change line they were recorded in. We're aware that this is a complicated subject and that sometimes we might be in error. Corrections and explanations are welcome.
Places
We haven't been as consistent about place names as we would prefer. We generally specify the country when a location is someplace other than the modern United States or Canada. Inconsistencies arise in connection with places whose names have changed, with municipalities that are in a different county (or country!) now than they were at the time of the event in question, and with places which essentially no longer exist as modern geographical entities, such as "Acadia" or "Savoy."
Notable ancestors (and a few relatives)
(1) Connecting to medieval ancestry
"There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his." (Helen Keller)
"Gateway ancestor" is a term of art in modern North American genealogy, generally referring to an immigrant ancestor, usually (but not always) alive in the 17th century, who is provably descended from a large number of pre-1500 Europeans, almost all of whom are liable to have been gentry or aristocracy because those tend to be the individuals for whom older records survive. (It was only in the 1550s that England began requiring parishes to keep records of all baptisms, marriages, and burials.) The actual fact, of course, is that almost everyone in modern North America (including Black people, Jews, Muslims, and members of other minority groups) is descended at some point from what Patrick calls the "Great Medieval Cloud," i.e., that aforementioned cluster of several thousand pre-1500 mostly upper-class Europeans whose biographical details are known to us. Having a known "gateway ancestor" probably doesn't mean you have more "noble blood" (a silly concept at any rate) than the random person next to you on the bus; it means only that you're one of the people lucky enough to have some idea of one of the specific paths of your descent from the Great Medieval Cloud. As this explainer demonstrates, there's absolutely nothing special about it; we really are all descended from Charlemagne. We're also all descended from millions of everyday people whose identities we'll never know.
Teresa has four canonical "gateway ancestors":
Additionally, her 10X-great grandmother Elizabeth Stoughton (b. 1597 in Burstead Magna, Essex, England; d. 1647 in Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts), daughter of the Rev. Thomas Stoughton (on whom, more below), has a well-documented gentry ancestry that definitely stretches back to 1400 and probably extends to before A.D. 1000 if (as seems more likely than not) Joan Roberts' mother was Isabel Culpepper.
On Patrick's side, generations of Hayden family researchers, including Patrick himself, have spent a lot of energy examining Francis Heydon (Hayden, Heyden) (d. 1694), a first-generation immigrant to Virginia and Maryland who died in 1694, and who is the earliest proven ancestor of the Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky Haydens. It's been asserted since the late nineteenth century that he was the same Francis Hayden that was christened in Watford, Hertfordshire on 14 Aug 1628, and that he was a great-grandson of the armigerous Francis Heydon who married Frances Longueville. Unfortunately, there are too many inconsistencies in this narrative. There's no positive proof that the Francis who died in Maryland in 1694 is the same person who was born in Watford in 1628. And there are significant problems both with the widely-repeated idea that the immigrant Francis's father was the Edward Heydon who married Ellenor Whitehead, and with the equally-widespread idea that this Edward's father, another Edward Hayden who married a Frances Burr, was the same Edward as the eldest son of Francis Hayden who married Frances Longueville.
It's also been widely asserted that the Watford Heydons were secret Catholics -- see, for instance, this Find a Grave page for Francis, which says, echoing decades of Hayden family legend, that "[i]n the year 1535 a Haydon family friend, Sir Thomas More, was beheaded, because he wouldn't denounce his Catholic faith. The Haydon family were devout Catholics, and feared for their lives. They and many other Catholic families had to worship in secret or probably be put to death." There is no evidence whatsoever that the Watford Heydons were socially acquainted with Thomas More, nor is there any evidence that they were Catholic recusants. Indeed, the armigerous Francis Heydon (1540-1606) of Watford, husband of Frances Longueville, was granted a market in Watford in the 1590s by Queen Elizabeth--who was very much not in the habit of granting valuable political favors to anyone associated with a family that had the slightest suspicion of recusancy attached to it. The immigrant Francis Heydon, like many generations of his descendants, was a vigorously orthodox Roman Catholic of great ferocity, which actually argues strongly against his supposed descent from the visibly pliable and conformist Watford family. Patrick's patrilineal descent from the original immigrant Francis has been proven by the Hayden DNA Project, but we no longer consider Francis more of a candidate for "gateway ancestor" status than any of the other possible-but-unproven candidates noted in the next several paragraphs.
(Patrick is very likely descended from post-Reformation Catholic recusants, but we're as likely to find them among the forbears of Robert Cole (1628-1662) and other early immigrants to St. Mary's County as we are to find them among the problematic supposed ancestors of Francis Heydon.)
Another appealing but unproven idea is that Thomas Hinton (b. 1693) of Maryland, who married Rachel Howard (b. 1700) and from whom Patrick and many other people are descended, was descended from John Hinton, M.D., physician to the family of Charles I and II, and/or his father Thomas Hinton, M.P. Both of these latter Hintons were definitely descendants of Edward III via John of Gaunt, and Gaunt's son, the churchman Henry Beaufort. And it's a matter of record that several of Thomas and John Hinton's immediate descendants were involved in the early colonization of Virginia and North Carolina. (A daughter of Thomas, whose given name is unknown, married early Virginia settler Samuel Mathews (d. 1658) as his second wife; Patrick's sister-in-law is descended from Mathews by his first wife.) But notwithstanding the claims put forth in York Lowry Wilson's 1962 A Carolina-Virginia Genealogy, the evidence for a specific descent from those Hintons to Patrick's known Hinton forebears of Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky seems to us to be hazy at best. For various reasons, our view is that some kind of connection is possible, but the spotty records that survive from early 17th-century Virginia are unlikely to yield a definitive answer.
Judge Edward F. Butler's vast 1997 tome, The Descendants of Thomas Pincerna, Progenitor of the Butler Family, traces a descent to Patrick's great-times-3 grandfather Christopher C. Butler (1810-1858) from the original Butler settlers of Kent Island, Maryland, who are themselves solidly proven "gateway ancestors". Unfortunately, this rests on the idea that Patrick's great-times-9 grandfather John Butler (born 1668 or 1675 in Virginia, died after 1723) was a son of Thomas Butler and Jane Baldridge, and while this is accepted by Judge Butler and some other Butler researchers, and marked as possible in Jon Stallard's quite good Butler of Droitwich (2004), it appears to be unproven.
Judge Butler does give this John Butler's wife as a daughter of Edward Thompson (d. 1662) by Joan, widow of the aforementioned Thomas Butler's father, gateway ancestor Thomas Butler who died before 16 Jan 1647 on Kent Island, Maryland. It's worth noting that many Butler family histories have called this Joan, whose first husband was London haberdasher Nicholas Mountstephen, "Joan Christopher"; that the proven descendants of Thomas Butler of Kent Island contain a large number of men named Christopher; and that the descendants of Patrick's aforementioned 9XG-grandfather John Butler also contain a large number of Christophers, including four in his direct line to Patrick. It's also worth noting that if Judge Butler is right about the parentage of both Patrick's 9XG-grandfather John Butler and his wife, then this John Butler would have been married to his half-aunt, which seems a bit Targaryen even for early colonial Virginia. Despite this, Patrick finds it impossible to completely dismiss the idea that his own Butler forebears are descended from or at least related to the "gateway ancestor" Butlers of Kent Island, Maryland and Westmoreland County, Virginia.
Finally, Patrick's 9X great-grandfather Henry Culpepper (1633-1675), proven by DNA testing to be the common ancestor of 80% of the Culpeppers in America, is often shown as a son of John Culpeper, baptized 26 Oct 1606 in Harrietsham, Kent, a descendant of many manorial and armigerous families. The evidence is suggestive but inconclusive; a good summary can be found at this entry at the extensive Culpepper family site. Notably, if this Henry Culpepper really turns out to be the son of this John, then Teresa and Patrick's most recent common ancestor would be recent indeed -- John Culpepper of Bedgebury, Goudhurst, Kent (1430-1480), a major figure in this late-medieval legal drama.
(2) Mayflower passengers
I was riding on the Mayflower when I thought I spied some land
I yelled down to Captain Arab, I'll have ya understand
—Bob Dylan, "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream"
Teresa is descended from several of them:
William Brewster (abt 1566-1644) and his wife Mary (abt 1569-1627)
Francis Cooke (1583-1663)
Edward Fuller (1575-1621) and his unnamed wife (d. 1621)
Samuel Fuller (abt 1608-1683), son of Edward Fuller
Stephen Hopkins (1581-1644)
Giles Hopkins (1608-1689), son of Stephen Hopkins
John Tilley (1571-1621) and Joan Hurst (1568-1621)
John Howland (1591-1673) and Elizabeth Tilley (1607-1687), daughter of John Tilley and Joan Hurst
William Mullins (abt 1572-1621)
Priscilla Mullins (1602-abt 1685), William's daughter, and her future husband John Alden (abt 1598-1687)
Bonus brother-of-a-Mayflower-passenger ancestor: Teresa is also descended from Arthur Howland (abt 1600-1675), brother of John Howland. Arthur settled in Marshfield, Massachusetts some years after the founding of the Plymouth colony. Like his brother Henry, and entirely unlike their more famous brother John, Arthur was a firm Quaker, and endured the lifetime of legal penalties this brought upon him.
Bonus Mayflower genealogical nitpick: William Mullins and his daughter Priscilla were accompanied on the voyage by William's wife Alice (d. 1621), but it's not at all certain that Alice was Priscilla's mother, rather than her stepmother. Both William and Alice died in the first winter at Plymouth.
Leaving aside the Mayflower passengers, for sheer loopy diversity of descendants, Patrick's personal favorite of Teresa's early New England ancestors is the couple Isaac Stearns (1595-1671) and Mary Barker (1600-1677), whose descendants include Clara Barton, Brigham Young, Robert Goddard, Richard Nixon, Orson Scott Card, Forrest J Ackerman, T. S. Eliot, Ursula K. Le Guin, former Macmillan CEO John Turner Sargent Jr., and Countess Géraldine Margit Virginia Olga Mária Apponyi de Nagy-Apponyi, Queen Consort to King Zog I of Albania.
(3) Filles du roi
By 1660 or so it had become apparent that the fledgling North American colony of New France was badly short of marriageable women. To ameliorate this, between 1663 and 1673 the French government recruited respectable young women of limited prospects and, after vetting them for suitability, provided each of them with a small dowry, a chest of clothes, and one-way passage to Quebec. The approximately 800 women who made this journey became known as the "filles du roi", the "daughters of the King." Millions of modern French-Canadians can trace their descent from them, often from several. Teresa's fille du roi ancestors are:
Madeleine Auvray (1652 Rouen - 1734 Neuville)
Catherine Beaudin (1651 Paris - 1718 Neuville)
Marie Bonheur (1651 Bruyères-le-Châtel - 1691 Sainte-Famille)
Jeanne Burelle (1648 Duclair, Normandy - 1724 Pointe-aux-Trembles)
François Duval (1650 Paris - 1725 Québec City)
Marie Hus (1644 Rouen - 1716 Quebec City)
Jeanne Fourier (1651 France - 1704 Quebec)
Madeleine Gaumond (1646 Paris - 1703 Québec City)
Jeanne Marie Gauthier (1639 Domats, Yonne - 1719 Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade)
Marguerite Lamiro (1646 Paris - 1706 Québec City)
Élizabeth Agnès Lefebvre (1655 Paris - 1725 Cap-St-Ignace)
Catherine Lemesle (1646 Rouen - 1716 Quebec City)
Élisabeth Leroy (1626 Senlis, Oise, Picardy - 1708 Quebec)
Anne Leseigneur (1649 Rouen - 1733 Chambly)
Marguerite Moitié (1646 La Rochelle - 1701 Sainte-Famille)
Françoise Pédenelle (1647 Loix - 1706 Île d'Orléans)
Anne Perrault (1647 Paris - 1688 Île d'Orléans)
Madeleine Têtu (1641 Rouen - 1703 Beauport)
(4) The Civil War
While the American Civil War was happening, most early Mormons were otherwise engaged, so Teresa has only two ancestors (that we know of) who were involved in it. Her father's great-grandfather Louis Joubert (1841-1919), immigrant from Quebec to Illinois, appears to have fought as a Union soldier in the 6th Illinois Cavalry, Company I. The 6th Illinois fought at the Battle of Port Hudson (22 May 1863); the second Battle of Franklin (30 Nov 1864); the Battle of Nashville (15 Dec 1864); and the minor engagements the Second Battle of Memphis (21 Aug 1864) and the Battle of Okolona (22 Feb 1864). And one of the few facts we know about another great-grandfather of Teresa's father, John Coston (~1835-1865; possibly also called "Joseph" and "Castin" or "Costin") is that he enlisted in Company H, Indiana 79th Infantry Regiment on 15 Aug 1862, and was mustered out on 13 Jul 1865.
(Naturally, given her large New England ancestry, Teresa has several genealogical connections to major Civil War figures. Via Simon Hoyt, 1593-1657, and his unknown first wife, she's a 6th cousin 6 times removed to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, 1820-1891. Via Alice Freeman, 1595-1658, and John Tompson, d. 1626, she's a 7th cousin 6 times removed to Gen. George B. McClellan, 1826-1885. Via Samuel Lathrop, 1621-1700, and Elizabeth Scudder, 1625-1700, she's a 5th cousin 6 times removed to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885. Via Desire Howland, 1624-1683, and Capt. John Gorham, 1621-1675, she's a 5th cousin 5 times removed to Gen. Benjamin Butler, 1818-1893. Via Thomas Parker, 1737-1822, she's a half-1st-cousin 5 times removed to Civil War-era New Jersey governor Joel Parker, a "War Democrat" who was highly critical of the Lincoln administration. And via Joseph Loomis, 1590-1658, and Mary White, 1590-1652, she's a 5th cousin 6 times removed to the abolitionist John Brown, 1800-1859.)
Patrick has four direct ancestors who fought in the Civil War, evenly split between the Union and Confederate sides.
Great-great grandfather Jefferson Porter Workman (1835-1919), Company E, 46th Tennessee Infantry (Confederate), enlisted in October 1861 and was shortly thereafter captured at Island No. 10 and sent to Camp Douglas, Illinois. He took the oath to the US while in prison and was discharged 30 August 1862.
Great-great-great grandfather William Henderson Parker (1824-1898) was drafted as a private for a period of one year into a detachment of substitutes for the Union army. He was then mustered into Company F of the 18th Kentucky Infantry in London, Kentucky on 20 Sep 1864; he served for at least 10 months. He was discharged on 23 Jun 1865 near Louisville, Kentucky. An asthmatic when he entered the Army, subsequent to his service he had to sleep at night sitting up because lying down made him unable to breathe. A Pension Office document dated 14 Jan 1886, of which we have a photocopy, states that he was disabled by "paralysis caused by wading in water waist deep."
Great-great grandfather James S. Hayden (1836-1908) enlisted in the 4th Kentucky Infantry (Confederate) upon its organization at Bowling Green, Kentucky in September, 1861, and served in Company K. According to the History of the First Kentucky Brigade by Edwin Porter Thompson (Cincinnati: Caxton Publishing House, 1868), James Hayden "fought at Baton Rouge, Murfeesboro, Jackson, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Rocky Face Gap, Resaca, and Dallas; from Dallas to Atlanta; both days at Jonesboro', and in all the mounted engagements." The exact date of James S. Hayden's discharge is unknown to us but according to later records he served to the end of the war. Four days after his death on 4 Nov 1908, the Owensboro (Kentucky) Messenger reported a resolution passed by the Rice E. Graves Camp of Confederate Veterans: "Whereas, One more call, one more answer. J. S. Hayden, member of Rice E. Graves camp, answers to the final call and passes into the great beyond. Brave soldier and good man, always ready, both in the field of battle, or in the peaceful pursuits of life; generous in life, true to his friends, and stood by his political party to the last. When death called he was anxiously scanning the returns of the election, like the brave soldier he was. 'Oh,' he said and joined his comrades on the other side. Just a promotion, higher up in the ranks, where the boom of cannons or the strains of a soldier's life is not known. Peace to his ashes."
Great-great grandfather Henry Isaac Newton (1836-1893) enlisted in 1862 in the Union Army of the Cumberland, 12th Kentucky Cavalry. According to Patrick's third cousin, the estimable family historian F. X. Flinn, "he was a corporal...in the support business, tending to the horses, cooking meals for his company...and probably playing music to entertain the troops. In Oct 1863 the 12th was part of Burnside’s campaign in East Tennessee, and Isaac was captured along with other cooks and horse tenders and spent 9 months as a POW. We have copies of his service records and of the claims he filed for support in the 1880s, attributing his terrible digestion and suffering to his time as a Confederate prisoner. He was so weakened by his late 40s that he transferred title to his wife and she ran the farm in her name; he died at 56; she lived to be almost 80. He gave his life for his country--slowly and painfully over three decades." Our own research accords with this. Newton was captured in Sweetwater, Tennessee in 1863 during Burnside's abortive campaign to push south and spent nearly a year in a Confederate prison. His regiment was mustered out 23 Aug 1865. In later life, he ran a musical instrument store in Owensboro, Kentucky. Musical compositions by him appear to have survived until at least the 1950s; we would love to find copies of them.
Despite their fathers' service on opposite sides, Confederate veteran James S. Hayden's son Clarence Eugene Hayden (1872-1908) married Union veteran Henry Isaac Newton's daughter Sarah Frances "Fannie" Newton (1879-1970); they were Patrick's father's paternal grandparents. Patrick remembers meeting his great-grandmother Newton on several occasions when he was a child.
Patrick has a few more known distant genealogical connections to the Civil War. Through shared descent from Charles Ewing (d. 1770) and his wife Martha Baker, Patrick is a third cousin four times removed to Confederate brigadier general Richard Montgomery Gano (1830-1913). More interestingly, Patrick has two somewhat recondite genealogical connections to the early life of Abraham Lincoln. Among the children of the Charles Ewing and Martha Baker mentioned above was Caleb Ewing (d. about 1780). Caleb's daughter Mary "Polly" Ewing (1774-1829), 1st cousin 6 times removed to Patrick, married Richard Berry, Jr., and in 1806, Abraham Lincoln's parents Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married at the Berry home in Washington County, Kentucky. Earlier, in 1802, Patrick's 5XG-uncle Wilford Hayden (1772-1827) purchased 200 acres of land, including a two-story log house, from Mordecai Lincoln (1771-1830), uncle of the 16th President of the United States. Wilford Hayden subsequently expanded the house, adding a Federal facade. It is still there today, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the only house of any member of the Lincoln family still standing in Kentucky.
Patrick thinks the Confederate rebellion was treason in defense of slavery and doesn't deserve to be ennobled with "lost cause" nostalgia; also that Reconstruction failed to go far enough, with consequences that can be clearly seen today. However, it's in the nature of history that bad causes sweep up good people, and vice versa. Those of us who haven't lived through something like the Civil War shouldn't be too confident that we'd make all the right life decisions if this kind of history happened to us.
(5) Slaveowners
Prior to Emancipation, the overwhelming majority of Patrick's Kentucky and Maryland ancestors owned slaves. A non-trivial number of Teresa's New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania ancestors did so as well, along with her small number of ancestors in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas. Being interested in one's ancestors, and (inevitably) a little proud of what they weathered and what they accomplished, is no good if you don't also make note of the terrible things they did as well.
Patrick also notes the existence of the Black abolitionist leader Lewis Hayden (1811-1889), who, although associated with Boston where he ran a station on the Underground Railroad and held various public offices, was in fact born into slavery in ... Lexington, Kentucky. Nothing is known of Lewis's father except that he was "sold off early," but given the surname, and the fact that there were hardly any Haydens in north-central Kentucky in or before 1811 who weren't related to Patrick, the chances that one of Patrick's relatives owned one of Lewis Hayden's forebears would seem to be extremely high.
(6) Writers and editors of science fiction and fantasyWe've spent our professional lives in science fiction and fantasy publishing, so unsurprisingly we've wound up researching the ancestry of some of our contemporary colleagues, and also that of various figures of historical interest. Below are a few of our personal genealogical connections to people in the SF&F field who are no longer living.
Through early Virginia settlers Matthew Howard (b. ~1609, d. between 1652 and 1659) and his wife Anne (d. after 1659), Patrick is a tenth cousin once removed to John M. Ford (1957-2006).
Through John Post (1629-1711) and Hester Hyde (d. 1703), Teresa is a seventh cousin three times removed to Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988). Through Abraham Merrill (1637-1722) and Abigail Webster (1642-1712), she's a seventh cousin four times removed to Damon Knight (1922-2002). Through Joseph Shaw (1664-1718) and Judith Whitmarsh (1669-1760), she's an eighth cousin to David G. Hartwell (1941-2016). Through Samuel Lathrop (d. 1700) and Elizabeth Scudder (1625-1700), she's an eighth cousin twice removed to Fritz Leiber (1910-1992). Through the Rev. Joseph Hull (1596-1665) and his unknown first wife, she's a ninth cousin twice removed to Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985). And through Joseph Farwell (1641-1722) and Hannah Learned (1649-1722), she's a ninth cousin once removed to Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018).
(A good illustration of the eye-watering interconnectedness revealed by long lines of ancestry is the fact that the aforementioned Robert A. Heinlein and Ursula K. Le Guin, titans of 20th century science fiction and yet comprehensively different writers and thinkers in almost every way, were seventh cousins once removed, both being descended from an early Scottish immigrant to New England, William Munroe, d. 1718, and his wife Mary Ball, d. 1691.
Finally and unsurprisingly, given Teresa's extensive ancestry in 17th-century Rhode Island, she shares several ancestors with the author, essayist, and racist H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Via James Babcock (1641-1698) and Jane Brown (d. 1718), she and Lovecraft are seventh cousins twice removed. Other common ancestors between TNH and HPL are Tristram Dodge (~1607-1683) and his wife Anne (d. ~1686), and Thomas Hazard (~1610-1677) and his wife Martha (d. 1669). It's interesting to note that because of cousins marrying cousins, Lovecraft was in fact doubly-descended from each of these couples. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
(7) Modern celebrities
The actress and singer Florence Henderson (1934-2016), best known for playing Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, was Patrick's second cousin once removed. His great-grandmother Sarah Francis "Fannie" Newton (1879-1970; see the "Civil War" section above) was a sister of Florence Henderson's grandmother Anna Justine Newton (1867-1936). Patrick remembers meeting his great-grandmother on several occasions, but he never met Florence Henderson.
The eighteenth-century Virginia farmer Charles Word (1710-1792) and his wife Sarah are 6X-great grandparents to Patrick, and 5X-great grandparents to William Faulkner (1897-1962), making Patrick a sixth cousin once removed to the novelist.
Charles and Sarah Word are also 7X-great grandparents of Taylor Swift (1989- ), through her mother Andrea Gardner Finlay (1958- ), making the singer and Patrick seventh cousins once removed. Additionally, through her father Scott Kingsley Swift (1952- ), Taylor Swift is a ninth cousin to Teresa, being an 8X-great granddaughter of Teresa's 8X-great grandparents Caleb Knapp (1637-~1675) and Hannah Smith (1642-1685). (Teresa and Taylor Swift share several other ancestors in early New England, including the singer's direct paternal ancestor William Swift (d. 1643), but Caleb Knapp and Hannah Smith are the most recent.) Taylor Swift isn't the only relative Patrick and Teresa have in common; for a more spectacular instance of that, see the end of this document.
Patrick is also a sixth cousin once removed to baseball star Don Mattingly (b. 1961), through their shared ancestor Richard Mattingly, Sr. (1720-1783). He's also a sixth cousin three times removed to boxer Jack Dempsey (1895-1983), through shared descent from Philip Howard (d. 1705) of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and his wife Sarah.
We've already mentioned Patrick's relationship to the SF and fantasy writer John M. Ford (1957-2006), through shared descent from the abovementioned Philip Howard's grandparents, early Virginia settlers Matthew Howard and his wife Anne. Through the same couple, Patrick is also an eighth cousin three times removed to the American poet Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) and also to Lindsay's third cousins, the outlaws Frank (1843-1915) and Jesse James (1847-1882). Having the psychotic James brothers as relatives, even distant ones, is bad enough, but much more appallingly, descent from Matthew and Anne Howard also makes Patrick a seventh cousin three times removed to Nazi sympathizer and comprehensively terrible person Bessie Wallis (Warfield) Simpson (1896-1986), Duchess of Windsor, the woman for whom the equally vile Edward VIII abdicated his throne in 1936.
And through shared descent from another pair of early Virginians, Charles Ewing (d. 1770) and his wife Martha Baker, Patrick is a sixth cousin once removed to the noted aviation pioneer, Hollywood director, billionaire industrialist, and colorful nutcase Howard Hughes (1905-1976).
Teresa is a fourth cousin three times removed to Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie (1890-1976), better known as Agatha Christie, through their shared ancestors John Miller (1735-1811) and Hannah Bush (1737-1816).
Teresa is a fifth cousin twice removed to Madonna Ciccone (1958- ), which is to say that Teresa's grandmother Hazel Ethel Coston (1898-1970) was a straight fifth cousin to the singer. This is a little striking, because Hazel Ethel Coston was born sixty years before Madonna, but what it reflects is "longer" generations in the latter's descent from their common ancestors, the Quebec couple François Joseph Moursin dit Lajoie (1747-bef 1823) and Marie Françoise Trudel (1752-1823).
Also through common Quebec ancestry, Teresa is a ninth cousin to Beyoncé Knowles (1981- ), through their common 9XG-grandparents Guillaume Trahan (~1601-~1685) and Madeleine Brun (b. ~1643), early settlers of the French colony of Acadia in New France.
Teresa is a sixth cousin three times removed to the playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), through shared ancestors David Akin (1689-1779) and Sarah Allen (1692-1774).
Through two pairs of shared ancestors, Teresa is also doubly related to the poet Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) and his daughters, the novelists Joan Aiken (1924-2001) and Jane Aiken Hodge (1917-2009). Via Peter Tallman (1623-1708) and Joan Briggs, she's an eighth cousin twice removed to Conrad, while via John Briggs (1609-1690) and Sarah Cornell (d. 1661) she's his ninth cousin once removed.
Through common descent from the 17th-century immigrant (and gateway ancestor) Olive Welby (1604-1692) and her husband Henry Farwell (1605-1670), Teresa is a ninth cousin twice removed to American novelist Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937). She is also Pynchon's ninth cousin three times removed via their shared descent from Plymouth Colony leader William Brewster (1566-1644) and his wife Mary (d. 1627), and his tenth cousin three times removed via their descent from another 17th-century immigrant and gateway ancestor, Alice Freeman (1595-~1658) and her husband John Tompson (d. 1626).
Through shared ancestor William Ward (1603-1687), Teresa is an eleventh cousin to the brothers Brian (1942- ), Dennis (1944-1983), and Carl (1946-1988) Wilson, and their cousin Mike Love (1941- ). Inquiries are pending into the ancestry of Al Jardine.
Once again through shared Quebec ancestors, Teresa is a tenth cousin once removed to Hillary Clinton (1947- ), via her 10X-great grandparents Jean Guyon (1592-1663) and Matherine Robin (d. 1662). Another of this couple's descendants is Jean Chretien (1934- ), Prime Minister of Canada 1993-2003.
Finally, through that most productive of Quebec ancestors, Zacharie Cloutier (1590-1677) and his wife Xainte Dupont (1596-1680), Teresa is distantly related to a large number of other notables including Jack Kerouac, Angelina Jolie, the Dionne quintuplets, Camilla Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, and Canadian prime ministers Louis St-Laurent, Pierre Trudeau, and Justin Trudeau. You can read about Cloutier's many descendants in any number of places on the web, including the Wikipedia page about him. None of this is particularly unusual among modern people descended from early settlers of Quebec. Those first generations of immigrants to New France were a small population that kept good records, and their descendants have maintained a low level of intermarriage with the surrounding Anglo culture in the years since. Being able to trace one's relationship to multiple celebrities and politicians with French-Canadian ancestry is common among Francophone inhabitants of Quebec today.
(8) Early Latter-day Saints
Every line of Teresa's maternal ancestry contains people who joined the Latter-day Saint movement in the 1830s and 1840s, who endured the persecution that entailed, and who made the arduous journey west. The following are just a few examples chosen for particular historical interest.
Levi Gifford (1789-1860), one of the earliest General Authorities of what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was baptized into the church in 1831, when it was barely a year old. He baptized Eleazar Miller, who in turn baptized Brigham Young (1801-1877). He was a participant in Zion's Camp and went on to be ordained a Seventy, called to serve in the First Quorum of the Seventy. 4XG grandfather of Teresa.
Martha McBride (1805-1901), wife of early Mormon leader Vinson Knight (1804-1842). After Knight died young, she became one of the plural wives of Knight's close friend Joseph Smith (1805-1844). Following Smith's murder, she became one of the plural wives of Heber C. Kimball (1801-1868), another major figure in the early Mormon church. She was one of the founders of the Relief Society. Her Wikipedia entry correctly observes that she "was a witness to, and in some instances a key participant in, some of the pivotal events in early Latter-day Saint history." 5X-great aunt of Teresa, being sister to Teresa's 4XG grandmother Margaret Ann McBride.
Morris Charles Phelps (1805-1875), Mormon pioneer. In 1838, as one of several persecutions he and his family endured, he was jailed in Missouri along with major Mormon founding figures Parley Pratt and King Follett, and kept for months in wrist and ankle irons. After several months, he and Pratt escaped on July 4, 1839 with the courageous assistance of Morris's first wife Laura Clark Baldwin (1807-1842). GX3 grandfather of Teresa.
Myron Nathan Crandall (1818-1860), Mormon pioneer. He and his wife Tryphena Bisbee (1819-1863) were among the founders of Springville, Utah, now a town of over 30,000 people. They were married in Nauvoo, Illinois, in a ceremony performed by Hyrum Smith, brother of Joseph Smith. GX3 grandparents of Teresa.
Not surprisingly, Teresa is also related to a number of other LDS leaders. In modern times, the closest are probably Harold Bingham Lee (1899-1973), eleventh president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and her third cousin twice removed; and her second cousin twice removed Boyd K. Packer (1924-2015), who eventually became President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, some decades after ten-year-old Teresa got into a ferocious argument with him at a family gathering. Teresa also has several ancestors in common with Brigham Young, mentioned earlier; the closest are probably Deacon Simon Stone (d. 1708) and his wife Mary Whipple (1634-1720), making Teresa a fourth cousin six times removed to Young -- and an eighth cousin six times removed to Orson Scott Card, one of Young's innumerable great-grandchildren.
Finally, while he wasn't a Mormon, John Wentworth (1815-1888), a fifth cousin five times removed to Teresa, was an oddly significant figure in Mormon history. Wentworth is remembered as a two-term mayor of Chicago and a six-term member of Congress, but in 1842 he was merely the editor of the Chicago Democrat, in which capacity he wrote to LDS founder and prophet Joseph Smith with some questions on behalf of a friend, George Barstow, who was writing a history of New Hampshire. Smith responded with a letter that, among other things, set forth the first version of what became the fundamental LDS articles of faith. This document is known to Mormons as the "Wentworth Letter" and is considered to be among Smith's most significant statements of LDS belief. Tying this sidebar up with a bow, after his retirement from politics, John Wentworth spent tens of thousands of dollars compiling and publishing The Wentworth Genealogy -- English and American, a three-volume study of Wentworth ancestry which, while not without errors, stands as one of the best such self-published studies of its time. It was as part of this project that Wentworth funded Joseph Lemuel Chester's research in English parishes that first connected the original Wentworth immigrant, William Wentworth (1616-1697), to late-medieval English gentry, thus beginning the process of establishing William Wentworth as a "gateway ancestor" -- one of Teresa's four.
(9) Teresa's favorite medieval ancestors:
Geoffrey Luttrell (1276-1345) and his wife Agnes de Sutton (1288-1340), patrons of the Luttrell Psalter, which you should read about (and then look up on Google Images) right now. 20X-great grandparents of Teresa.
As alluded to earlier, the Teresa Nielsen Hayden Medieval Ancestry Trivia Lists Page includes such sections as "Magna Carta sureties," "Murderers of Thomas Becket," "Byzantine Emperors," and the ever-popular "All-Bloodshed All-the-Time Late Medieval Battles Appendix."
(10) A miscellany of others (post-1450)
Richard Sykes (1567-1645), Alderman (in effect, mayor) of Leeds, Yorkshire in 1629-30 and 1636-37. Called by historian Joan Kirby one of the "new, exuberant generation of confident, buccaneering merchants, whose determined exploitation of their influence over local parliamentary elections culminated in 1626 in the grant [to Leeds] of a charter of incorporation, whose provisions ensured that power was to reside unequivocally in their hands." His 6XG-grandson Mark Sykes (1879-1918) was the Sykes of the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. 11X-great grandfather of Patrick.
Edmund Sykes (d. 1587), uncle of the above, was a Catholic martyr, "hanged, bowelled, and quartered" at York Tyburn, 23 Mar 1587, for having become a Catholic priest on the Continent and having returned to England to practice his priesthood. He was beatified in 1987. Blessed Edmund Sykes Parish in Leeds is named after him. 13XG-uncle of Patrick.
Basil Hayden (1744-1804), Maryland farmer, distiller, and leader of a major emigration of Maryland families to then-frontier Kentucky. Supposedly the "Old Grand-Dad" on the label of the bourbon of that name, and definitely the person for whom the modern up-priced "Basil Hayden" bourbon is named. But not precisely an ancestor of Patrick's; see the details at the entry for Patrick's 4X-great grandfather William Leo Hayden (1785-1867). (Short version: Patrick is descended from Basil's brother, Basil's father, Basil's wife, and Basil's wife's illegitimate son, but not from Basil himself. Weirdly, Basil and Patrick share a birthday, January 2.)
Frances Jane Coomes (1747-1816), maiden name unknown, first Anglo schoolteacher and first female physician in Kentucky. Emigrated from Maryland with her husband in 1775-76. A fascinating essay about this pioneer woman, by descendant Rita Mackin Fox, is reproduced on our entry for her. 6X-great grandmother of Patrick.
John Thimbleby (1482-1550), one of the organizers of the Lincolnshire Rising of 1536 which immediately preceded the Pilgrimage of Grace. Progenitor of a long line of grimly determined Catholic recusants named Thimbleby, oddly not including his son Richard Thimbleby (1507-1590), also an ancestor of Teresa's, who converted to the Church of England during the reign of Queen Mary in what can only be described as a display of Olympic-level contrarianism. In a letter by Richard Cromwell to his uncle Thomas Cromwell, the mauler-of-monasteries who is the subject of Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall, John Thimbleby is cited as the particular ringleader in Lincolnshire that Richard would most like to capture. (In a further literary connection, this letter is itself recorded in Thomas Carlyle's 1845 Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, With Elucidations.) 14X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Rev. Thomas Stoughton (1555-1622), minister and author. His A general treatise against poperie, and in defence of the religion by publike avthoritie professed in England and other churches reformed was published at Cambridge in 1598, but only a few years later he was admonished for noncomformity and deprived of his vicarage. For the remainder of his life he lived off a series of small bequests from the wills of sympathetic nonconformists; the 1610 will of Alice Wade, for instance, describes him as "a silenced preacher." His later works include The dignitie of God's children (1610), Two profitable treatises (1616), and The Christians Sacrifice as set forth in Romans XII, 1, 2 (1622). 11X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Rev. John Lothropp (1584-1653), Puritan clergyman, famously imprisoned in England for his beliefs, 17th-century immigrant, a founder of Barnstable, Massachusetts, and another early exponent of church-state separation. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Marin Boucher (1587-1671), pioneer of early New France, ancestor to most of the Bouchers of North America. Quebec founder Samuel de Champlain left his clothing to Boucher in his will. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa, through three of his daughters.
Abraham Martin dit l'Ecossais (1589-1664) farmed a flat area just outside the walls of Quebec City which, after his death, came to be known as the "Plains of Abraham." Ninety-five years after his death, the decisive battle that delivered Quebec into British hands was fought on those same plains. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa, by two of his daughters.
Rev. Joseph Hull (1595-1665), relatively liberal cleric, originally Anglican, 17th-century immigrant, religious and political opponent of Plymouth Colony governor John Winthrop, and also a founder of Barnstable, Massachusetts. (Hull preached there before Lothropp arrived, but Lothropp's arrival with his large congregation is what really established the town.) 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.Edmund Freeman (1596-1682), assistant governor of Plymouth Colony (under William Bradford), 1640-47; principal founder of the town of Sandwich. 11X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Thomas Prence (1601-1673), husband of Mayflower passenger William Brewster's daughter Patience, and three-time governor of Plymouth Colony. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Nicholas Marsolet de Saint-Aignan (1601-1677), early interpreter and fur trader in New France. His long and irascible career is studded with interesting nuggets, such as the time that Samuel Champlain accused him, while he was living and trading with natives, of being "without religion, eating meat on Friday and Saturday" and indulging in "unrestrained debauchery and libertinism." 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Jacques Archambault (1605-1688) dug the first well in what is now Montreal. A plaque in back of the Pointe-à-Callière Museum of Montreal, on or near its actual location, commemorates this. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
John Strong (1606-1699), one of the founders of Windsor, Connecticut and Northampton, Massachusetts. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa.
George Lawton (1607-1693), early deputy to the General Assembly of Rhode Island and original signer of the compact that founded the town of Portsmouth in that colony. After 1680 he served several terms in the electoral position of Assistant to the Governor of Rhode Island. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Rev. James Noyes (1608-1656), nonconformist Anglican clergyman and emigrant to Massachusetts. A founder of Newbury, Massachusetts. His ecclesiastical writings include The Temple Measured (1647) and Moses and Aaron, or, The Rights of Church and State (1661). 9X-great grandfather of Teresa. His son Rev. James Noyes II (1640-1719), 8X-great grandfather, was one of the founding trustees of Yale.
John Briggs (1609-1690), who gave "spectral testimony" in the 1673 murder trial of Thomas Cornell, Jr. for the murder of Thomas's mother Rebecca Cornell. (Who may have been Briggs's sister. A good book about this whole affair is Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell by Elaine Forman Crane, published in 2002 by—of course—Cornell University Press.) 11X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Jeffrey Ferris (1610-1666), one of the founders of Greenwich, Connecticut, where he is memorialized in a stained-glass window at the First Congregational Church. His descendant George Washington Ferris (1859-1896) invented the Ferris wheel. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Thomas Hazard (1610-1677), one of the nine original founders of Newport, Rhode Island, and an ancestor of Oliver Hazard Perry and Matthew C. Perry. 11X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Elizabeth Fones (1610-1673), early Massachusetts settler whose personal life, and wild habit of owning her own property, scandalized Puritan society. She wound up living on Long Island with her third husband. She is the subject of a quite good 1958 historical novel by Anya Seton called The Winthrop Woman. 11X-great grandmother of Teresa.
Samuel Hubbard (1610-1690) and his wife Tacy Cooper (d. 1697), two of the founders of the Seventh Day Baptist Church in America. 11X-great grandparents of Teresa.
Nathaniel Dickens (1615-1692) sold, on 28 Feb 1677 to Mordecai Campannall and Moses Packechoe of Newport, Rhode Island, a parcel of land that became Touro Synagogue Cemetery, the second oldest Jewish cemetery in the United States. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Thomas Stanton (1616-1677), colonial-era trader famed for his skills as a native language interpreter. Appointed official interpreter by the short-lived Dominion of New England (1686-89). One of the original settlers of Hartford, Connecticut, he was also one of the four founders of Stonington. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Eloi Jarry dit Lahaie (b. 1616), wheelwright, held a tract of land in what is now central Montreal, overlapping the modern Bell Centre. In 1659 he was taken prisoner by the Iroquois and never heard from again. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa.
William Thorne (1618-bef. 1665) was a signer of the Flushing Remonstrance, the foundational document of religious liberty in America. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
John Crandall (1618-1676), founding settler of Westerly, Rhode Island, associate of Roger Williams. Descendant of several generations of unruly Puritan divines, including his grandfather Nicholas Crundall (1562-1605), of whom Wikipedia observes (in its article about John Crandall) that "[i]n a case brought in the Star Chamber against Nicholas Crundall, Jr., who succeeded his father as vicar [of Winterbourne, Gloucestershire], his accuser reported that Crundall resisted a constable, mockingly crying out 'The Queen's name! The Queen's name! I do not care a turd for thee nor her either.'" John Crandall was a 9X-great grandfather of Teresa and the direct paternal ancestor of Teresa's maternal grandfather Paul Leslie Crandall (1901-1987).
St. Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700), educator and organizer in New France, particularly in Ville-Marie, which became Montreal. Founder, in 1658, of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, one of Catholicism's first uncloistered religious communities for women. Declared "venerable" in 1878 by Leo XIII, she was canonized in 1982 under John Paul II. She is depicted, among other places, in the Canada sidechapel of the church of San Gioacchino ai Prati Castello (built 1891) on Via Pompeo Magno in the Prati neighborhood of Rome. 10X-great aunt of Teresa.
Hélène Desportes (1620-1675), widely supposed (with some credibility) to have been the first child of European descent born in Canada. Her first husband, Guillaume Hébert (1614-1639), was the son of Louis Hébert (d. 1627), apothecary, the first European to actually farm Canadian soil. By her second husband, Noël Morin (1606-1680), from which marriage Teresa descends, she was the mother of Germain Morin (1642-1702), the first Canadian-born Roman Catholic priest, and Marie Morin (1649-1730), the first Canadian-born nun. 9X-great grandmother of Teresa.
"Cornet" Joseph Parsons (abt 1620-1683) is recorded as one of the founders of both Springfield and Northampton, Massachusetts. As Maud Newton (whose 2022 book Ancestor Trouble, about the complexities of family history, is highly recommended) points out, what this actually means is that he had permission to trade with native Americans and some skill in their languages, and used this privilege and this skill to swindle them out of large quantities of land. His wife Mary Bliss Parsons (abt 1628-1712) was charged twice with witchcraft, in 1656 and again in 1675, many years before the Salem witch trials. She was acquitted both times. After the first trial, her husband sued her accusers for slander and won. In a nice twist of history, Joseph and Mary Bliss Parsons were direct ancestors of an authentic modern would-be sorcerer, Marvel Whiteside "Jack" Parsons (1914-1952), early Caltech rocket scientist, co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and disciple of the occultist Aleister Crowley. Joseph Parsons and Mary Bliss were 9X-great grandparents of Teresa.
Susanna North Martin (1621-1692), hung as a witch at the peak of the Salem, Massachusetts insanity. She was initially accused in 1669, but her husband sued her accusers for slander and narrowly prevailed. Her husband then died in 1686, leaving her alone and unpopular. Her 1692 trial was a travesty redeemed only by her brave refusal to be bludgeoned into guilty submission. On Tuesday, 19 Jul 1692, 70 years old and defenseless, she was murdered by the Salem authorities at Gallows Hill. She is remembered in John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Witch's Daughter" and the folk song "Susanna Martin", recorded by Touchstone, among many others. On October 31, 2001, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts formally exonerated her, which probably made somebody feel better. 10X-great grandmother of Teresa. Among her several accusers were William Brown (1615-1706), 11X-great grandfather of Teresa, and Jarvis Ring (1658-1728), Teresa's 8X-great grandfather. Bonus What Is There To Say I Can't Even: Susanna North Martin is also an 8X-great grandmother of Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney, 46th Vice President of the United States and Lord of the Flies.
Teresa's other ancestor killed by the witch delusion was Samuel Wardwell, born in 1643, who on 22 Sep 1692 at Salem achieved the not-very-consoling distinction of being the last man in America hung for witchcraft. As it happens, one of the overseers of both his murder and that of Susanna North Martin was the Rev. Nicholas Noyes (1647-1717), grandson of Teresa's 10XG-grandfather the Rev. William Noyes (1568-1622). On the occasion of the hanging of Samuel Wardwell alongside Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Redd, Margaret Scott, Martha Corey and Mary Easty, the Rev. Nicholas Noyes remarked "What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there." The Rev. Noyes was a big enthusiast for the business of accusing people of witchcraft and then killing them. Fun story: Before Sarah Good (1653-1692) was hung, Noyes demanded she confess. She replied "You are a liar! I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink." On 13 Dec 1717, at Salem, Massachusetts, the Rev. Nicholas Noyes died of a hemorrhage, literally choking on his own blood.
Urbain Tessier dit Lavigne (1626-1689), a sawyer, was in 1651 granted a parcel of land which included portions of what is now Montreal's Place d'Armes and of the Palais des Congrès de Montreal, best known in our circles as the site of the 2009 World Science Fiction Convention. A plaque sculpted into the facade of the Royal Trust Building, on the Place d'Armes, commemorates this fact. Like his neighbor Eloi Jarry, mentioned above, he was for a time taken prisoner by the Iroquois; unlike Jarry, he was returned after several months, missing only a finger. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa.
John Bowne (1627-1695), English immigrant to New Netherland, arrested on order of Peter Stuyvesant for hosting a Quaker meeting, sent to Holland for trial before the Dutch West India Company, where he exonerated himself and was sent home with a message ordering Stuyvesant to practice tolerance toward all sects. His first wife, also Teresa's ancestor, was Hannah Feake (1637-1678), daughter of Elizabeth Fones (see above) by her second husband Lt. Robert Feake (1602-1661). John Bownes's house in Flushing is still standing, the second-oldest structure in New York City, and is open to the public. 10X-great grandfather of Teresa.
Robert Laberge (1638-1712), who emigrated to New France in 1658, built a house in 1674, Maison Laberge, which is still standing, now one of the oldest buildings in Canada. 9X-great grandfather of Teresa.
The strikingly involved interconnections between many of these seventeenth-century colonists can perhaps be illustrated by the following, in which each of the boldfaced-and-italicized names is that of a direct ancestor of Teresa's mentioned above: Elizabeth Fones (1610-1655) married, first, in London, 25 Apr 1629, Henry Winthrop (1608-1630) (grandson of TNH ancestors Adam Winthrop 1548-1623, and Anne Browne, d. 1629); second, in Watertown, Massachusetts, 1632, Lt. Robert Feake (1602-1661); by him, she had Hannah Feake (1637-1678), who married John Bowne (1627-1695). Third, in Aug 1649 while arguably still married to her second husband, Elizabeth Fones married William Hallett (1615-1705). Some time after the 1655 death of Elizabeth Fones, her third husband William Hallet married Susanna Booth (d. 1675), who had previously been married to William Thorne (1618-bef. 1664); they were estranged by 1669 and divorced in 1674.
(11) Curiosities
"Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals." (Robert Anton Wilson)
Teresa has a few distant genealogical connections to major figures of English literature. John Dryden (1631-1700), poet, critic, and playwright, is her seventh cousin ten times removed. As Poet Laureate of England, Dryden distinguished himself by being the only person ever dismissed from that office, when, in the great tradition of Teresa's many truculent forebears, he refused to swear an oath of allegiance in 1688 to the new king, William III. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), satirist, poet, and author of Gulliver's Travels, is her eighth cousin eleven times removed. Her fifth cousin 14 times removed, Elizabeth Boyle (1576-1622), was the second wife of Edmund Spenser (d. 1599), author of The Faerie Queene. And Horace Walpole (1717-1797), antiquarian, art historian, and author of The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel (and, incidentally, son of Robert Walpole, 1676-1745, first Prime Minister of Great Britain in the modern sense), is her tenth cousin nine times removed. The common ancestors Teresa shares with all of these individuals are the Oxfordshire couple John Danvers (1382-1449) and Joan Bruley.
A closer connection from the world of Jacobean letters is to the author of A Feast for Wormes, the royalist poet Francis Quarles (1592-1644), third cousin to Teresa thirteen times removed, their common ancestors being Quarles's great-great grandparents Robert Browne (d. 1606) and Isabel Sharpe. According to a well-known anecdote that Teresa was fond of telling before she knew of her relationship to him, at one point Quarles discovered in conversation with one of the Fletchers that by total coincidence they were both working on epic-length poems describing the geography of the British Isles in terms of the human anatomy. Thus demonstrating that the phenomenon of two separate writers independently conceiving the same idea, even the same terrible idea, is less rare than one might think.
Moving into common ancestry with the 18th century, Teresa's 17XG-grandparents Thomas Gresley (~1365-~1445) and Margaret Walsh (d. >1421) were 9xG-grandparents of Elizabeth Jervis (1689-1752), beloved wife of Dr. Samuel Johnson.
And a 19th-century figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), was the 4XG-grandson of Teresa's ancestors Robert Lord (~1603-1683) and Mary Waite, making Teresa a fifth cousin five times removed to Hawthorne.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a daughter of a gentry family; her mother was a great-granddaughter of James Brydges, 8th Baron Chandos (1642-1714). Most Americans with documented late-medieval gentry ancestry can trace some kind of distant cousinhood to the author of Pride and Prejudice, often through several lines. Teresa has at least seven 15th-century common ancestors with her, the closest being Edmund Roper (d. 1433), making Teresa and Jane eleventh cousins nine times removed. Interestingly, in the line from Edmund Roper to Jane, Edmund's great-grandson William Roper (d. 1578) was married to Margaret More (d. 1554), daughter of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). William Roper wrote the first biography of his father-in-law, while his wife Margaret has been called "one of the most learned women of sixteenth-century England." Her translation of Erasmus's Precatio Dominica so impressed its author that he dedicated a subsequent work to her. They were 7X-great grandparents of Jane Austen.
Another pair of ancestors shared by Teresa and Jane Austen are John Throckmorton and Eleanor Spinney. This couple also provides a connection, albeit a recondite one, to William Shakespeare. Their 4XG-grandaughter Muriel Sheldon married Francis Clare. Francis Clare's aunt Joyce Blunt married John Combe the 2nd (d. 1558) of Stratford-upon-Avon. (Their son John Combe the 3rd died in 1614, leaving William Shakespeare £5 in his will.) John Combe the 2nd was the son of John Combe the 1st (d. 1550) and his wife Katherine. Katherine married, secondly, Adrian Quiney (d. 1553). Katherine and Adrian's great-grandson Thomas Quiney (1589-1655) married Judith Shakespeare (1585-1662), daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
Of course, descent from the Great Medieval Cloud makes it hard to avoid some kind of connection to Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), who aside from being one of the founders of modern English literature was also an accomplished courtier, diplomat, and civil servant, very much a member of the Cloud. (Here's Geoffrey Chaucer's entry in the History of Parliament.) Teresa's closest connection to Chaucerland is her direct descent from Thomas Swynford (1305-1361) and Nicolaa Druel, parents of Hugh Swynford (1340-1372) who was the first husband of Catherine de Roet (1350-1403), sister of Phillipa de Roet (1348-1387), wife of Chaucer. Catherine de Roet is of course better known for being the mistress of, and ultimately the third wife of, Chaucer's friend and patron John of Gaunt (1340-1399).
The couple Roger Wentworth (d. 1452) and Margery le Despenser (~1399-1478), 17X-great grandparents of Teresa, are her common ancestors with a number of persons of interest. Through their daughter Margaret Wentworth (1430-1478) and her husband William Hopton (1431-1484), they were ancestors of both Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and his wife Martha Wayles (1748-1782), and also of Edith Bolling (1872-1961), second wife of Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924). Through their son Philip Wentworth (1424-1464) and his wife Mary Clifford (1416-1478, a granddaughter of Henry "Hotspur" Percy), Roger and Margery were great-great grandparents of Jane Seymour (1508-1537), third wife of Henry VIII (1491-1547), and therefore also 3X-great grandparents of Edward VI (1537-1553). They were also great-great grandparents of Elizabeth Seymour (d. 1563) who married Gregory Cromwell (d. 1551), son of Thomas Cromwell (~1485-1540), looter of the heritage of Catholic England. According to Gary Boyd Roberts, Philip Wentworth and Mary Clifford are also the most recent common ancestors of Rachel Meghan Markle (b. 1981) and her husband Prince Henry of Wales (b. 1984). But much more interestingly, Philip Wentworth and Mary Clifford were 13XG-grandparents of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), pioneer of computer programming, through their descendant, Ada's mother Anne Noel-Byron (1792-1860), 11th Baron Wentworth, and her husband George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824).
For direct descent to Teresa from the largest number of children of a single individual, we believe the current record-holder is Isabel (also called Elizabeth) de Vermandois (1081-1147). (Descent from this individual is sufficiently widespread that genealogist Douglas Richardson once jokingly asserted the existence of an exclusive lineage organization called the Society of Non-Descendants of Isabel de Vermandois.) By her first husband Robert, Count of Meulan (1046-1118), Isabel had eight children; by her second husband William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey (1080-1138) she had five. Teresa is descended from four of the first set: Waleran, Count of Meulan (1104-1166), Robert, 2nd Earl of Leicester (1104-1168; twin to Waleran), Isabel de Beaumont (d. after 1172), and Maud of Meulan (d. after 1189); and from four of the second: William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey (1119-1148), Reynold de Warenne (1126-1179), Gundred de Warenne (d. after 1156) (through one child of her first marriage and one of her second), and Ada de Warenne (d. 1178).
It's probably not possible to have hundreds of documented 17th- and 18th-century colonial ancestors and avoid being distantly related to several US presidents. The Jefferson connection is mentioned above; Teresa has common ancestors with 24 more, ranging from Washington to Obama. To the best of our knowledge Teresa's closest presidential connection is to Herbert Hoover, to whom she's a fourth cousin three times removed, via their shared ancestors the 18th-century Pennsylvania Quaker couple John Haworth (1717-1776) and Mary Garner (b. 1729), who were 3X-great grandparents of Hoover and 6X-great grandparents of Teresa. By contrast, her most recent known common ancestors with Barack Obama are Thomas le Grosvenor (1377-1429), and his wife Joan de Venables.
As for crowned heads, anybody descended from Olive Welby, William Wentworth, Margaret Wyatt, and Alice Freeman is descended from a lot of them, mostly people who lived before 1200 A.D. The most recent monarch from whom Teresa descends is Edward I of England (1239-1307), followed closely by Philippe III of France (1245-1285). Don't get too excited; it's been argued that as much as sixty to eighty percent of the population of modern Britain is descended from Edward I. And of course we are all descended from Charlemagne.
Teresa is also a first cousin 12 times removed to Oliver St. John (d. 1673), Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Cromwell's Commonwealth, and an otherwise notable politician of the English Civil War era.
In his Pedigree and Progress: Essays in the Genealogical Interpretation of History (London: Phillimore & Co., 1975), the late Anthony Wagner, Garter King of Arms, presented a pedigree he called "Atlantic to Pacific, 1274." In brief, Charles II (1254-1309), king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, was a nephew of several TNH ancestors, including Louis IX, king of France; Louis IX's wife Margaret of Provence; and Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III, king of England. Charles II's sister-in-law Anna of Hungary, sister of his wife Maria, married Andronicus II Palaeologus (d. 1332), emperor of Byzantium, whose half-sister (by his father's mistress) Maria Palaiologina (d. 1308) (popularly called St. Mary of the Mongols) married Abaka (d. 1282), second Ilkhan of Persia, son of Hulagu, first Ilkhan of Persia, brother of Kubla Khan (1215-1294), Emperor of China, both Hulagu and Kubla being grandsons of Genghis Khan (~1162-1227). "Thus in five years and through only eight persons a genealogical bridge was built across the Eurasian land mass from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean."
Patrick has a few recondite genealogical connections of his own to persons of note. Patrick is descended from his 7XG-grandfather Edward Cole (1657-1717) by his first wife Honora, whose birth surname is unknown. But Edward's second wife, who he married after 1694, was Elizabeth Slye (1668-1734), whose aunt Frances Gerard (sister of her mother Susannah Gerard) married, as her fourth husband, her being his third wife, Col. John Washington, who by his first wife Anne Pope (d. 1668) was the paternal great-grandfather of the first president of the United States. Both Frances and Susannah Gerard were among the several children of Dr. Thomas Gerard (1608-1673), an early immigrant to Maryland who played a prominent role in the colony's politics before being permanently barred from voting or holding office due to his support for Josias Fendall's rebellion of 1659-60, at which point Dr. Gerard decamped to Virginia. Dr. Thomas Gerard is a proven gateway ancestor, bequeathing to his descendants (including Patrick's ancestor Edward Cole's second wife Elizabeth Slye) descent from the Great Medieval Cloud. It has been said that of all the manorial lords of early Maryland, Dr. Gerard was the one who governed his properties in the most traditionally baronial style, by which you may correctly infer that he was a thoroughly terrible person to have as your landlord or boss. According to John Walton ("Genealogica Marylandia: Gerard's Daughters", Maryland Historical Magazine 68:443, 1973), "[a] footnote to the history of Virginia records that Dr. Thomas Gerard, together with Henry Corbin, John Lee, and Isaac Allerton, erected a 'Banquetting House'; many years later an unusually strait-laced Bishop of Virginia cited the events that occurred in this house as an example of 'riotous living' in the seventeenth century."
Mayflower-related footnote: The Isaac Allerton mentioned above, who lived from the late 1620s to 1702, was a son of Isaac Allerton of that famous journey, by his second wife Fear Brewster, a daughter of Plymouth colony religious leader William Brewster (1567-1644), one of Teresa's improbable number of Mayflower ancestors. The younger Isaac Allerton emigrated from the Plymouth colony to Virginia in 1660, where he spent the rest of his life. He held many public offices, and served under the aforementioned Col. John Washington in 1667. Via his daughter Sarah he was an ancestor of president Zachary Taylor, and a great-granddaughter of one of his great-granddaughters, Mary Willis Lee, married Ambrose Madison, brother of president James Madison.
So. Reiterating, in order to explain even more dizzying-and-yet-arguably-interesting connections: Patrick is descended from Edward Cole (1657-1717) by his first wife Honora, specifically from Edward's son, Patrick's 6XG-grandfather, Robert Cole (1686-1720). Robert's brother Edward Cole (1682-1762), Patrick's 7XG-uncle, married Ann Neale (d. 1768), a member of the storied Neale family of Maryland. Ann's grandfather James Neale (1615-1684), another proven gateway ancestor, came to Maryland around 1635 and held a variety of public offices. In the 1650s he was in Europe, primarily Spain and Portugal, as an agent of the king and of the Duke of York. In 1660 he was in Amsterdam as an agent of Lord Baltimore protesting the settlement of the Dutch on the Delaware. He returned to Maryland not long after. His wife was Anne Gill (d. 1697-98), who had been a lady-in-waiting to Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, and who was a daughter of of early Maryland settler Benjamin Gill (d. 1655) and his wife, yet another proven gateway ancestor, Anne Maria Mainwaring. Anne Neale, wife of Patrick's 7XG-uncle Edward Cole, was a daughter of James Neale (d. 1725-27) (son of the aforementioned James Neale) by his second wife Elizabeth Lord (d. 1734), but the younger James Neale's first wife was Elizabeth Calvert (d. 1684) of the Calvert family who were made proprietors of Maryland, becoming the Lords Baltimore, by Charles I. In further notable genealogical connections, Anthony Neale (d. 1723), brother of the younger James Neale, was the paternal great-grandfather of Leonard Neale (1746-1817), second Archbishop of Baltimore. Anthony Neale's son, the archbishop's grandfather, was Roswell Neale (d. 1751), whose wife Mary Brent was a daughter of Col. George Brent (d. 1694-1700) and his wife Mary Sewall (d. 1694), a descendant of the Sewall family of Manchester and Coventry, England, whose New England branch included the noted judge and diarist Samuel Sewall (1652-1730), himself a son of Henry Sewall (1615-1700) and Jane Dummer, themselves ancestors of our friend Lydia Nickerson and of the great SF and fantasy writer Fritz Leiber. George Brent's father, also George Brent (1602-1671) was a brother of early Maryland immigrants Margaret Brent (1601-1671) and Giles Brent (1600-1679). Mary, who never married, was one of the most significant women in early Maryland history. Giles, who married Mary Kittamaquund (d. ~1655), daughter of the Tapac of the Piscataway, is along with his brother George, a proven gateway ancestor through their mother Elizabeth Reade (d. 1631), a descendant of John of Gaunt (1340-1399). Giles and his Native American wife Mary were also GX4-grandparents of Barbara Hagan (1805-1890), who married Charles C. Clayton (1802-1874), brother of Patrick's great-great-great-grandmother Catherine Clayton (d. ~1840). And all three of the aforementioned Brent siblings were, through their mother Anne Peyton, great-great-great grandchildren of the odious Richard Rich (1497-1567), Speaker of the House of Commons, torturer of Anne Askew, entrapper of John Fisher, wrecker of monasteries, called (correctly) by Hugh Trevor-Roper a man "of whom nobody has ever spoken a good word." Rich is most famous as the betrayer of Thomas More. In the movie The Man for All Seasons, Rich perjures himself against Thomas More in order to become Attorney-General for Wales. More responds, "Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world...but for Wales?" It is one of the endless ironies of history that Rich's descendants, through Mary Brent and Roswell Neale, include an early American archbishop and several of the first Jesuits in English-speaking America. And returning to Mary Sewall (d. 1694), the first husband of her mother Jane Lowe (1633-1701) was Charles Calvert (1637-1715), governor of Maryland, 3rd Lord Baltimore, 2nd Lord Proprietor of Maryland. Further, Jane Lowe was a great-granddaughter of the fabulous Elizabeth Hardwick (1547-1608), "Bess of Hardwick", businesswoman and patron of the arts.
Teresa has several startlingly-recent common ancestors with Laura (Wightman) Hayden, wife of Patrick's brother Benjamin. The first two were noticed by Laura, a sharp-eyed genealogist herself: Samuel Yeomans (1655-1704) of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and Mary Ellis (b. 1657) of Connecticut, who are 7X-great grandparents of Laura and 9X-great grandparents of Teresa. The remaining six were noticed by Patrick: John Sweet (~1603-1637) and his wife Mary (d. 1681), of Salem, Massachusetts, were 9X-great grandparents of Laura and 11X-great grandparents of Teresa -- and Benjamin Armstrong (d. abt. 1717) and his wife Rachael of Connecticut, and James Worth (d. abt. 1725) and his wife Elizabeth (d. aft. 1725) of Boston and later Connecticut, were, all four of them, 8X-great grandparents of Laura and 9X-great grandparents of Teresa. Benjamin and Rachael's son Joseph Armstrong (1684-1749) married Lydia Worth (b. 1695), daughter of James and Elizabeth, and were ancestors of Teresa; another son of Benjamin and Rachael, John Armstrong (1678-1749), married Ann Worth (1691-1757), another daughter of James and Elizabeth, and were ancestors of Laura.
But the ultimate genealogical curiosity connecting Teresa's and Patrick's known ancestry isn't a common ancestor, but a common relative. Jabez Perkins was born in 1766 in New Haven, Connecticut and died in 1835 in Whitley County, Kentucky. His parents, Timothy Perkins (1736-1782) and Miriam Sperry (1743-~1783), had moved from Connecticut to North Carolina, probably between 1771 and 1773, as part of a general emigration of Tory sympathizers from Connecticut as the colony's politics came more and more under the control of supporters of separation from Great Britain. Through his mother, Jabez Perkins was a descendant of six of Teresa's direct ancestors. Fully three of his offspring married the children of direct ancestors of Patrick, and at least two of his great-grandchildren married descendants of Patrick's ancestors as well. Adding a genealogical cherry on top, one of Jabez Perkins's grandchildren was the second wife of one of Patrick's GX3 grandfathers.
To go into more detail, Jabez Perkins was a great-great grandson of Teresa's ancestors Richard Sperry (1606-1698) and his wife Dennes (1631-1707); a GX3-grandson of Teresa's ancestors Samuel Hotchkiss (1623-1663) and his wife Elizabeth Cleverly (d. 1681); and a GX3-grandson of Teresa's ancestors James Clark (d. 1689) and his wife Sarah (d. 1661). Jabez Perkins's son Solomon Perkins (1786-1824) married Nancy Freeman (1798-1870), daughter of Patrick's GX4-grandparents James Brigham Freeman (d. 1830) and Mary Polly Moore (d. 1835). His daughter Amy Perkins (1798-1862) married Harrison White (1788-1853), son of Patrick's 4XG-grandparents John White (1750-1829) and Mary Shelton (1760-1824). And his daughter Nancy Perkins (1803-1860) married Dempsey White (1798-1860), Kentucky state legislator, also a son of the aforementioned 4XG-grandparents of Patrick John White and Mary Shelton.
Further downstream, Jabez Perkins's great-grandson William B. Perkins (1873-1948) married Patrick's first cousin three times removed Elizabeth Louise White (1880-1946), a granddaughter of Patrick's GX3-grandparents Nicholas White (1802-1876) and Nancy Anne Sumner (1804-1876), making the children of William B. Perkins and Elizabeth Louise White 7th cousins three times removed to Teresa (through their descent from the aforementioned Richard and Dennes Sperry) and second cousins twice removed to Patrick. And Jabez Perkins's great-grandson Ancil Perkins (1885-1961), brother to the aforementioned William B. Perkins, married Patrick's second cousin twice removed Rebecca Naomi White (1891-1970), a great-granddaughter of Patrick's aforementioned GX3-grandparents Nicholas White and Nancy Anne Sumner, making their children also 7th cousins three times removed to Teresa, but third cousins once removed (instead of second cousins twice removed) to Patrick.
Finally, as alluded to above, Nancy White (1838-1928), a daughter of the aforementioned Nancy Perkins and Dempsey White, was the second wife of Patrick's GX3-grandfather William Henderson Parker (1824-1898). To put it another way, the second wife of Patrick's GX3 grandfather--his mother's father's father's mother's father--was Teresa's fifth cousin five times removed. We strongly suspect time travelers were involved.
