I walk among the graves of my Irish, English, Scottish, and French ancestors who for centuries lived and died throughout New England and the Canadian Maritimes.

They were Pilgrims, Puritans, Huguenots, Catholics, Anabaptists, Baptists, Quakers, Shakers, Anglo-Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Disciples, Methodists, and Congregationalists.

They were in the Pequot War, King Philip's War, the Siege of Port Royal, Queen Anne's War, Le Grand Dérangement, the Hampshire Grants Dispute, the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord, the Siege of Boston, Saratoga, and the Battle of Rhode Island. They fled the Great Potato Famine of Ireland, fought to preserve the Union in the Civil War, and endured the hardships of combat and imprisonment at Andersonville.

They were among the earliest settlers and founders of Plimoth, New Bedford, Braintree, Boston, Watertown, Concord, Littleton, Groton, Mendon, and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Wethersfield, New Haven, Milford, Newtown, and New Milford, Connecticut, Piscataqua, New Hampshire, Huntington, New York, Strafford and Norwich, Vermont, Newport, Providence, Scituate, and Glocester, Rhode Island.

No matter how many generations or surnames removed, I consider them family since all of my ancestors were essential to my own existence today.

Quotations…

"Having now traced our line back a few centuries I began to have a deeper appreciation for those past times. It was as though I was walking through a time warp, looking at each new historical event from a personal perspective. Anyone who has tried this knows what I am referring to. You begin to "feel" and "see" things differently because those things happened to people that possessed the same genes (or something pretty close) to the ones living now in your very own body. It is the epitome of living vicariously."

(Author Gary Shattuck, in the preface of artful and designing men, The Trials of Job Shattuck and the Regulation of 1786-1787. Tate Publishing, LLC, 2013.)


"It is the first American section to be finished, to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America."

("New England: There She Stands" by Bernard Devoto, Harper's, March 1932)


"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: time to be born, and a time to die."

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, King James Version)

I walk among the graves of my Irish, English, Scottish, and French ancestors who for centuries lived and died throughout New England and the Canadian Maritimes.

They were Pilgrims, Puritans, Huguenots, Catholics, Anabaptists, Baptists, Quakers, Shakers, Anglo-Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Disciples, Methodists, and Congregationalists.

They were in the Pequot War, King Philip's War, the Siege of Port Royal, Queen Anne's War, Le Grand Dérangement, the Hampshire Grants Dispute, the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord, the Siege of Boston, Saratoga, and the Battle of Rhode Island. They fled the Great Potato Famine of Ireland, fought to preserve the Union in the Civil War, and endured the hardships of combat and imprisonment at Andersonville.

They were among the earliest settlers and founders of Plimoth, New Bedford, Braintree, Boston, Watertown, Concord, Littleton, Groton, Mendon, and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Wethersfield, New Haven, Milford, Newtown, and New Milford, Connecticut, Piscataqua, New Hampshire, Huntington, New York, Strafford and Norwich, Vermont, Newport, Providence, Scituate, and Glocester, Rhode Island.

No matter how many generations or surnames removed, I consider them family since all of my ancestors were essential to my own existence today.

Quotations…

"Having now traced our line back a few centuries I began to have a deeper appreciation for those past times. It was as though I was walking through a time warp, looking at each new historical event from a personal perspective. Anyone who has tried this knows what I am referring to. You begin to "feel" and "see" things differently because those things happened to people that possessed the same genes (or something pretty close) to the ones living now in your very own body. It is the epitome of living vicariously."

(Author Gary Shattuck, in the preface of artful and designing men, The Trials of Job Shattuck and the Regulation of 1786-1787. Tate Publishing, LLC, 2013.)


"It is the first American section to be finished, to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America."

("New England: There She Stands" by Bernard Devoto, Harper's, March 1932)


"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: time to be born, and a time to die."

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, King James Version)