Family history & genealogy writing

Example 1:  Connecting client to multiple relatives and famous people

This style of family history story connects the client, Mr. X, with multiple famous people that descended from the same common ancestors -- with a twist at the end!   It's Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon meets Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story.  

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This story of two distant cousins, X and George, begins with their 15th great-grandfather, Thomas.

Thomas was 22 years old when he fought in the last battle of the War of the Roses, which confirmed Henry VII’s place as the head of England and the newly formed House of Tudor, and united Henry’s House of Lancaster (the red roses) with the opposing House of York (the white roses). The odds of surviving this battle weren’t good for Thomas, a Lancaster. The Yorkists had hired 2,000 German and Swiss mercenaries who – armed with a new weapon called the arquebus, the predecessor of the musket – usually prevailed with their ability to kill from farther away, tear through armor, and terrify horses and men with noise and smoke. Another 4,500 Irish mercenaries and 1,500 wealthy locals rounded out the Yorkist army and overwhelmed the Lancasters in prior engagements.

But the Yorkist army was getting ragged after 200 miles of marching and three battles in 10 days. Strange lights in the morning sky that day spooked them, and many deserted. The remaining men were gathered in a horseshoe bend on the Trent River, surrounded on three sides by water, when found by the Lancasters. The mercenaries charged and it appeared the Yorkists might break free of their horseshoe trap – except that the arquebus took up to a minute to complete the 28 steps necessary to reload, and the newly-expanded Lancaster army of skilled archers fired volley after volley of arrows into the mostly unarmored men for three hours. A witness said they looked like fallen hedgehogs.

Our story might end there if the officer of arms hadn’t taken notes acknowledging the efforts of 52 men that day – including young Thomas – and tucked the paper into his book, one of the first printed in England: The Game and Play of Chess, which wasn’t so much about chess as it was about one’s place in society. Henry VII knighted Thomas and the others on June 16, 1487, for their bravery in that battle, the Battle of Stoke Field. He was now Sir Thomas Wheeler, a man of documented history. Three years later Sir Thomas married an 18-year-old young woman named Joan, and they soon had a half-dozen sons and one daughter. Thomas lived a long life for the time, passing away at about 80 years old.

Thomas’ son, Henry, never left the family home of Cranfield (north of London), nor did his son or grandson. Thomas’ son John, however, met and married a woman from Salisbury – over 100 miles away, southwest of London – where he moved and remained the rest of his life, as did his son and grandson. For over a hundred years, both families enjoyed good farming and relative comfort as the descendants of a knight and supporters of the crown.

But in 1625 King Charles I assumed the throne and dissolved parliament, beginning the Eleven Years’ Tyranny. Henry’s and John’s great-grandsons and their young families decided to join 200,000 others in the Great Migration of the 1630s, fleeing an overbearing church and economic depression, and sailing separately on two of some 200 ships bound for the new Massachusetts Bay Colony. Like Henry’s and John’s families, the migrants were more educated and prosperous than the average English citizen, leaving in disillusionment to create a literal “new” England.

Henry’s great-grandson settled inland and eventually acquired hundreds of acres in Concord, west of Boston, where Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson later lived, while John’s great-grandson settled 40 miles away along the northern coast by the New Hampshire border, also acquiring a bit of land. The first child that Henry’s great-grandson had after arriving in colony – Mr. X's progenitor – was a baby girl. The first child the John’s great-grandson had on this “new” continent – George’s progenitor – was a baby boy.

Henry’s great-grandson’s family stayed in Massachusetts for nine generations, each generation moving a few miles away from the next to establish their own farm, yet all within a 60-mile radius, for 300 years. John’s great-grandson’s family spent the next six generations in Massachusetts, moving south to the small village of Rehoboth, outside of Providence, followed by three more generations in Ohio. Young men from Henry’s and John’s lines continued to fight in more battles: Shay’s Rebellion, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War…

In the early 1900s wanderlust took Henry’s 10th great-granddaughter – who by then was living a few miles north of her Rehoboth cousins – out to California, where she married the son of a Danish immigrant minister. Marriage brought John’s 10th great-granddaughter back to New England from Ohio, as her husband’s rising career in steel and manufacturing was creating a comfortable and elevating position in life.

Both of the 10th great-granddaughters had sons, each of whom had five children. Mr. X was the second-eldest son of the five on Henry’s side, and George was the second-eldest son of the five on John’s side. Mr. X and George both enlisted in the Navy as soon as they graduated from high school, and both served in the Pacific. Both married the year that they discharged from the Navy, attending college while raising small children. Both loved baseball. Both lived for a while in California, where their daughters were born in December. Both started businesses, neither of which would be either man’s calling. Neither ever really recovered when those daughters, born in California, passed away.

Every day Mr. X drove from his farm through the oil fields of eastern Colorado to work, passing by the Burris Company, which made rifle scopes. One day he stopped in; he thought it would be nice to have a career change, and so he sold his business to work there. Burris was soon acquired by Beretta, the oldest company in Europe. Beretta got its start by operating ore mines and making swords in Italy in the 1400s, and in 1526 received an order from the Armory of Venice to be the first manufacturer of… the arquebus. Manufacturing work with Burris took Mr. X back to Asia – especially China – involved some government contracts, and he eventually become its chief executive.

Mr. X's cousin, George, also drove through the oil fields to work every day, and with the encouragement of his friends he also thought about a career change. He sold his business, too, and his new professional path took him back to Asia as well – China in particular – and like his cousin, he became increasingly involved in government work, holding various director and chief executive positions.

While you might not know Mr. X, you probably know his cousin George. After moving to California and marrying the son of a preacherman, Mr. X's grandmother abandoned her husband and four children. Mr. X's father, an alcoholic, did the same to his own family. Mr. X was the first in his family to attend college, and adored his step-grandmother until she succumbed to her injuries after being hit by a car. George’s grandmother in Ohio devoted herself to her family and her four surviving children, and to her husband’s career. Their boys began a family tradition of attending Yale. Had she not been hit and killed by a car at age 48, she would have surely been her son’s and grandson’s biggest supporter when they ran for public offices, and George’s biggest supporter when he became chief executive… of the United States of America. For you see, George drove to work through the oil fields of Texas, not Colorado, and his career change was into politics, not manufacturing. Mr. X always voted for his cousin George… George Herbert Walker Bush.

You may also know Mr. X's and George’s cousin, Mark. When Henry’s great-grandson and his wife set sail for the Massachusetts Bay Colony they already had a little girl, whose descendants stayed in New England and never caught the wanderlust. That is, until Mark’s mother married a local boy who joined the army, and then they were off. But Mark didn’t join the army or navy like his father and cousins – he was already fighting the battles in his head, and the little people that he thought lived in the walls. He was able to suppress them enough to work in Asia like Mr. X and George, and even take on management positions and government work. But the nagging thoughts returned. He became deeply religious and unforgivably offended by those he considered blasphemous and phony, especially musicians, and spoke of killing them. No one called the authorities when he travelled to New York City with a newly acquired gun and list of singers, roughing up one at a subway station and shooting another in the back. Mark signed the confession statement that he left in his hotel room as “Holden Caulfield” instead of his own name… Mark David Chapman. The musician he killed was… John Lennon.

But Mr. X, George, and Mark have another cousin, Alicia. You see, like Henry’s great grandson, John’s great-grandson and his wife also brought along a small child when they crossed the Atlantic, a little boy whose descendants became restless generations before those of his cousins and began a winding westward migration via New York, Illinois, Michigan, and the Rocky Mountains, eventually arriving in California. Like Mr. X, Alicia’s grandparents settled in Colorado. And like George, Alicia attended Yale; though unlike the enjoyable collegiate time George had, she dealt with harassment and a terrifying stalker. Unfortunately, in killing John Lennon, Mark inspired the stalker to try to impress Alicia – by shooting George’s friend. George came perilously close to becoming a leader far sooner than he intended, for the friend that Alicia’s stalker shot was… Ronald Reagan. We know Alicia better by the name her siblings started calling her as a child, Jodie… Jodie Foster.

And now you know the rest of the family.