Looking at period newspaper notices concerning the Victorian photographer Carl Constantine Lyon, I’ve learned a bit more about his photography business and life. CC Lyon created images of the landscape of the West Indian island of St Kitts, but apparently relied largely on income from taking portraits of Kittitians, as…
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I was finally able to get to Belfast, post-pandemic, to visit the Linen Hall Library for some research on my husband’s ancestor, the mysterious Mr. Robert Gracey. I knew from marriage records that his daughter, Lilian Ann Gracey (my husband’s 2nd great grandmother) had married Hugh Macauley in Belfast in…
I have traced my husband’s Cannonier ancestors back to the British island of Montserrat. His 2nd great grandfather, John Henry Cannonier, was born about 1832 and died young in St Kitts in 1868. I have yet to establish a definite link between the Cannoniers of Montserrat and John Henry Cannonier,…
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 great-grandfather Burchell Edward Marshall (1873-1951) was the son of a school teacher who became a prosperous businessman and landowner in his native St Kitts. During the first half of the 20th century, he owned a number of sugar cane estates on the island, which was not typical for…
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…
I’ve written many times about my husband’s ancestors from the tiny Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis, including the use of surnames as middle names in his Mallalieu tree. This can be very helpful in looking for the names of ancestors going further back. His great-grandfather, John Nicholas Faxivo…
I have looked in the past at the documents and background details surrounding the manumission of two young enslaved people, whose freedom was purchased by my husband’s 3rd great-grandfather, Frederick Walton Mallalieu of St Kitts. No relationship is specified between Frederick and the two young people. In my research into…