American Ancestors

Our second closest link has been extremely useful, but the closest hasn't yet answered my emails. I've sent two and must now leave it lest he think I'm a loon. Looking at his twitter account, he doesn't seem to do much in the way of social media. If we haven't heard from him in a month or two, I'll urge my brother to try contacting him through the site itself, meantime we will have to do what we can through other links.

The guy who has done all the work for us died in 2014, a veteran of the Korean war. For posterity's sake (and because I lose stuff all the time) I cut and paste his findings here.

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Thank you Jesse.


I would expect the paternity event to tie in with the blank line on my grandfather's birth certificate. She cited her husband beneath, but the Mitchell Unit said that the delicate omission often indicated that the mother was not sure. Here is where it gets tricky. Could have been a love affair, could have been an assault, could have been earlier in the history of the family fathers ... People don't want to think that their relative behaved in untoward fashion in another country then abandoned squeeze and son. The timing would point towards Jesse Judson Parker 1's era so I may be looking for him or a relative of his in Ireland/Scotland a few years after WWI.

Read up on Massachusetts history; god these people were tough! I have always detested puritanism, simply because it seems so closed off, so unimaginative, a starvation diet for the soul bound to burst out in pathological control issues; and the modern day version displeases me just as much. But leaving that aside, got to tip my hat to the resilience of these people. Apparently one family member had a way of 'listening' that told when the British had crossed a bridge or something ( yes, they were involved in the war of Independence; I found the story then lost it again). Moving the other way, Samuel Porter's ancestry goes back a while though it seems that research has dried up on it. Theories say he was descended from Hugh de Port, but I am writing that off as people's desire to be aristocratic. My father's maternal line offsets all this, sailing off as it does into the Celtic sunset of Dalriada and Erin. Just as well. It's one thing to be descended from tough bible thumpers carving out a new world, I am not ready to be related to Norman squareheads.

Halloween 21

Dervish has hyperthyroidism. Poor puss! I'll go collect the medication this morning.

Guests last weekend as well as the one before; we went to the Halloween party at the local rock club. The live band were capable but not inspiring, the disco was great, possibly a bit too much AC/DC but is that even really possible? Good times were had by all...



My mother hated this pic.

You all look demented she informed me. I tried to explain that three of us were zombies and one was a Catrina.

The spirit is ugly, she texted, I do not know why you would want to do that to yourself.

She cannot bear anything less than conventionally beautiful. I remember her describing the Royal Ballet's Tales of Beatrix Potter as grotesque.

I mean yes, perhaps, in a very minor way, but grotesquerie can have its charm. Only not for her.

And then there's work. But that can wait for another post.