I’ve written about an ancestor on my maternal tree, my 10th great-grandfather Robert Coles, who was publicly shamed for drinking alcohol. He was made to wear a scarlet letter “D” in the 1630s in Boston. On my paternal tree, I’ve found another ancestor who suffered a similar public humiliation in…
Category: <span>Colonial American</span>
Following up on a post regarding the story of my maternal DeCamp ancestors, I have found some important family tree clues through a new feature on the familysearch.org website. Their full text search lets you search huge numbers of hand written (as well as typed) documents in their collections. The…
Returning to the Gray and DeCamp branches of my maternal grandfather’s family tree, I was recently reminded of John DeCamp and Susannah Gray, my 5th great-grandparents. According to an 1874 newspaper obituary of their son George DeCamp Sr., John and Susannah lived in Winchester, Virginia in the early 1770s, and…
In honor of the approach of Halloween, I’ll look at the only story of an accused witch that I’ve found in my family tree. On my maternal grandfather’s side of the family, the DeCamp family of New Jersey and Western Pennsylvania go back to colonial era Quakers on Long Island,…
I am fortunate to live in the neighborhood of Smithtown, NY, on Long Island. It is the home of Caleb Smith State Park. The park features 543 acres of nature preserves with hiking trails, bird watching, a pond stocked with fish, and the main house and museum. It was home…
I’ve written before about trying to determine if old family stories, passed down over a century or more, are completely true, only partly true, or just made-up wishful thinking. The question of a possible ancestral relationship on my mother’s family tree to the US president James Monroe (1758-1831) has been…
My husband’s DNA covers a broad range of Northern European roots, with some Southern European and African thrown in as well. This reflects, in part, his diverse paternal ancestry from the West Indies, from places like England, Wales, Madeira, and areas of Western African where people were seized and sold…
Going back to the 1600s on my maternal grandfather’s tree, I’ve traced back to Laurens Jansen De Camp (about 1645-1719), a Huguenot who came to New Amsterdam in the 1660s. In the New World, he married Aeltje Mandeville, a Dutch woman born about 1657 in Holland. Aeltje’s father was Yellis…
Everyone has skeletons in their family history closet, known and unknown. Some can seem quaint and even funny to us today, like my Coles ancestor who had to wear a scarlett “D” for drinking more alcohol than his puritan neighbors liked. But other skeletons can be viewed through current eyes…
In 1791, Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury in the brand new United States of America. Hamilton proposed a tax on distilled spirits production to help pay down the national debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. In spite of opposition from people like Thomas Jefferson, congress approved the…