Ken Trenholm

Ancestors

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Bold text'NOTE: Very Much a work in progress

Biography

Ken Trenholm was born on a small island in Canada, Prince Edward Island. By the very nature of his birthplace, he already knew everyone to be related; so, the idea of a Big Tree on WikiTree only made sense. More of his bio will be forthcoming.

Descendants & Cousin Intro

Ken Trenholm is a descendent of a servant on the Mayflower, a married couple in the Quaker movement in the late 1600s, a french-speaking Protestant couple forced to leave France due to religious persecution during the reign of King Louis XIV, the Plymouth Pilgrim, the first migration from Yorkshire to Atlantic Canada in 1772, and many others.

Ken is also the cousin of a number of interesting people with historical significance, including:

• a woman who helped free 300 slaves through the Underground Railroad
• first female aviator to fly solo across Atlantic Ocean
• a princess who was tragically killed in a car accident
• an actress with 22 Primetime Emmy nominations
• a beloved P.E.I. author who wrote about an orphan girl
• a number of famous poets and writers
• a person spied on by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a number of cousins by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
• an actor and comedian who came to us as an alien ended up touching every element of the human spirit
• a leader in the birth control movement and an advocate for woman's suffrage
• the host of a famous teenage dance show for 30 years
• a maritime folk music icon who was as tall as loved
• a Native American who won Gold in the Olympics
• a mother and child who were drowned at sea with a 1519-ton ship that hit an iceberg and within five minutes sank while filled with a cargo of gold bullion valued at over $6M in 1901 dollars and over 100 passengers and 60+ crew
• a painter famous for his drip-method
• A President of the USA who would have rather been a great poet than a President
• a female french chef who was on television and also a spy in WWII
• the creator of a code of dots and dashes
• the father of logic and deductive reasoning
• a teenager of an elite group who raided pro-slavery towns, kidnapped slaves in order to bring them to freedom through the Underground Railroad
• a Captain of a regiment who refused an order to kill unarmed women and children of peaceful native Cheyenne and Arapaho populations and instead said if anyone in his regiment obeyed the order, he would shoot his own men himself
• A man who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge to his death at the time of the Stock Market Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression
• a notorious leader of a gang of counterfeiters, horse thieves, and burglars
• A New Brunswick man believed to be murdered on his way to Spokane (his body was never found)
• a family of four with only the 11-month-old surviving the sinking of the RMS Titanic
• a Hollywood producer/director who was responsible for producing President John F. Kennedy’s infamous birthday party when Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President."
• the leader of a philosophical movement called Transcendentalism
• the writer and producer of "I Love Lucy"
• an abolitionist, a feminist, and an author of "Little Women" who had typhoid fever and was being treated with a mercury-based drug, which poisoned her
• an American bookkeeper who jumped from the 86th-floor Observation Deck of the Empire State Building and whose photograph of her body, flattening a black limousine, while still holding her pearl necklace, was featured in LIFE magazine and still today referred to as "the most beautiful suicide".
• a chemical engineer with over 40 patents involving oil and alcohol
• a captain during the War of 1812 and also of what some believe to be the first warship built by Canadians with an all-Canadian crew
• a reporter who was murdered by (likely) the Mafia via a bomb under his car
• a couple who in their retirement drove west from Nova Scotia across Canada and the USA, and never came back
• a Hollywood star who could do magic by the twinkle of her nose
• a Morman prophet (who among Mormons, is regarded on par with Moses and Elijah) who married up to 30 women
• the Canadian who was the first person to build and fly ultralight planes to help guide Canada Geese south for the winter (made into a movie)
• the U.S. Attorney General who did not obey Nixon's orders and resigned instead of firing the lead investigator of the Watergate Scandal
• a US Senator who believed everyone had a right to education in the 1920s
• a President who was known for his honesty and signed the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863
• four Prime Ministers of Canada
• 12 Presidents of the United States of America
• five cousins who were assassinated
• a serial killer whose brain is one the largest specimen's on display at a museum in New York (plus last man hung in New York State)
• and many more

If interested, continue reading below.

A Descendant of a Servant on the Mayflower

Edward Doty (1599-1655) (10x Great GP) was one of 23 servants on the Mayflower (1620). There were 106 passengers, 30 crew, 41 saints, and 40 seculars. The people of the Mayflower traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found corrupt. Edward was one of two servants to Stephen Hopkins on board the ship (the other being Edward Leister). In June 1621, he engaged in a sword and dagger duel with Leister (some think a dual for Hopkins' daughter, Constance); both were wounded before being separated and were punished by having their head and feet tied together for an hour (it was supposed to have been for a whole day, but they were let go early because of their apparent suffering). Edward was a freeman before 1633 but we do not have an exact date. Edward Doty, noted for his quick temper, made regular appearances in Plymouth Colony Court throughout his life, mostly just being sued for various misdemeanors (failing to pay on a contract; failing to keep his cows fenced; not properly caring for a servant [yes, Edward, once a servant, would have his own servant]), but occasionally for more serious infractions (twice for assault, once for theft, and once for slander). Edward Doty married Faith Clarke Philips (1618-1675), who was roughly 19 years younger than Edward and came on the ship Francis in April 1634 and were married the following January. Faith was 15 years old when she arrived in America. Of interest, Stephen Hopkins grandchild (Elizabeth Cooke) would end up marrying Edward Doty's child (John Doty). Which, would make Hopkins' Ken's 9x GG uncle's wife grandfather.

A Descendant of The Plymouth Pilgrim

John Cary/Carew/Carey (1612-1681) (8x Great Grandfather through his paternal line and his 9x Great Grandfather through his maternal line) was known as The Plymouth Pilgrim ^[1]. John came to New England about 1637. John was one of the 54 original proprietors of Bridgewater, Massacheusetts. He was the first town clerk of Bridgewater and served in that role from 1656 to 1681. Tradition says he was the first Teacher of Latin in Plymouth Colony. ^[2]. John married Elizabeth Godfrey (1626-1680) in 1644 who would have been 18 years of age roughly 14 years younger than John.

The Puritan Great Migration Descendant

Over 40,000 early New England colonists—both Puritans and non-Puritans—who arrived during the period of the Great Migration generally associated with the Puritans, between 1621 and 1640.

Ancestor	GGP #x
Pratt, Matthew and Elizabeth (Kingham) (1595-1672)	8
Adams, Edith (Squire) "ancestor of two US presidents" (1587-1672)	9
Wood, John of Portsmouth (1590-1655)	8
Cogwell, John "ancestor of two US presidents" (1592-1669)	9
Moore, Thomas of Salem Mass (1565-1636)	10
Moore, Ann (Grafton) "midwife in Salem" (1570-1639)	11
Clarke, Thurston "Tristram" (1590-1661)	11
Cogswell, Elizabeth (Thompson) (1594-1676)	9
Godfrey, Francis (1595-1669)	9
Tracey, Tryphosa (Lee) (1597-1655)	9
Allen, Samuel I (1597-1669)	7
Unknown, Faith (1598-1663)	11
Godfrey, Elizabeth (Unknown) (1600-1669)	9
Graves, Thomas (1605-1653)	9
Yonges, Martha (Moore) (1613-1671)	10
Partridge, George and Sarah (Tracy) (1613-1695)	10
Adams, Capt. Samuel (1617-1689)	8
Brett, Elder William (1618-1681)	8
Philips, Faith (Clarke) "Edward Doty's wife" (1618-1675)	10
Waldo, Hannah (Cogswell) (1626-1704)	8
Allen, Samuel II (1633-1705)	6
Brown, Judith (Budd) (1635-1707)	10

Quarkers Descendant

Quakers, also called Friends, belong to a historically Christian (Protestant) denomination known formally as the Religious Society of Friends.[2] Members of the various Quaker movements are all generally united by their belief in the ability of each human being to experientially access the light within, or "that of God in everyone"

Henry Wills (1628-1714")
Mary (Pease) Wills (1632-1714)
Ken's 9x Great GP

Yorkshire Emigration Decendent

Migration from Yorkshire to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick occurred between 1772 and 1775 and involved an approximate one thousand migrants from mainly Yorkshire, England arriving to settle the colony some years following the expulsion of its Acadian population. The first boat arrived on 1 May 1772, called the "Duke of York" and had these members
John Trenholm (1763 - 1827) (owned a sawmill Point de Bute)
Robert Trenholm (1776 - 1819) (drowned at sea Point de Bute)

Hugeunot Cousins

French-speaking Protestant Christians, alive between 1540-1790. Many of them were forced to leave their French or French-borderland homes due to religious persecution, notably during the reign of Roman Catholic French King Louis XIV (1648-1715)

Daniel Streing (1654-1707) and Charlottet (LeMaistre) Streing (1660-1723) married possibly in Paris, immigrated to Boston and then to New York. (My 3x Great GP brother's wife's 3x Great GP)

54 Notable Cousins

Harriet (Ross) Tubman (1822-1913) (9th Cousin, 7x Removed), was born into slavery in Maryland, USA. When she was five or six years old, she was a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock its cradle as it slept; when it woke up and cried, she was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back. She escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 300 enslaved people, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She was known as Moses or the "conductor" of this railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage. After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. Catherine Afamsone (1469 - ?) is Ken's 15x GG Grandmother and Harriet's 8x GG Grandmother. You can follow this link to chart the path to their common ancestor.

Amelia Earhart (1897-1973) (10th Cousin, 2x Removed), was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. During an attempt at becoming the first female to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, she died. She was last seen in Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, on the last land stop before Howland Island and one of their final legs of the flight. Nearly one year and six months after she had disappeared, Earhart was officially declared dead. When Earhart disappeared in 1937, President FDR authorized a $4 million-dollar search to recover her and her co-pilot. Investigations and significant public interest in their disappearance still continue today. Earhart's mother, Amelia "Amy" Otis, married a man who showed much promise but was never able to break the bonds of alcohol. Edwin Earhart was on a constant search to establish his career and put the family on a firm financial foundation. When the situation got bad, Amy would shuttle Earhart and her sister Muriel to their grandparents' home. There they sought out adventures, exploring the neighborhood, climbing trees, hunting for rats and taking breathtaking rides on Earhart's sled. After graduation, Earhart spent a Christmas vacation visiting her sister in Toronto, Canada. After seeing wounded soldiers returning from World War I, she volunteered as a nurse's aide for the Red Cross. Earhart came to know many wounded pilots. She developed a strong admiration for aviators, spending much of her free time watching the Royal Flying Corps practicing at the airfield nearby. Margaret Elwin (1576-1630) is Ken's 11x GG Mother and Amelia's 9x GG Mother. You can follow this link to view their common ancestor.

Mercy (Otis) Warren (1728-1814) (3rd Cousin, 8x Removed) was a published poet, political playwright and satirist during the age of the American Revolution—a time when women were encouraged and expected to keep silent on political matters. Warren not only engaged with the leading figures of the day—such as John, Abigail, and Samuel Adams—but she became an outspoken commentator and historian, as well as the leading female intellectual of the Revolution and early republic. In the eighteenth century, topics such as politics and war were thought to be the province of men. Few men and fewer women had the education or training to write about these subjects. Warren was an exception. During the years before the American Revolution, Warren published poems and plays that attacked royal authority in Massachusetts and urged colonists to resist British infringements on colonial rights and liberties. An avid patriot, Warren began writing political dramas that denounced British policies and key officials in Massachusetts, notably Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Her 1772 satire, “The Adulator" (published anonymously in the Massachusetts Spy newspaper), criticized the British colonial governor’s policies a full four years before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Warren also published two additional plays skewering British colonial leaders, Defeat (1773) and The Group (1775.) She supported the Boston Tea Party and boycotts of British imports and urged other women to follow suit. From the outset of the American Revolution, Warren began writing its history, which was published in 1805 as History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. This was among the first nonfiction book published by a woman in America, and she was the third woman (after Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley) to publish a book of poems. Some of her other works—Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, for example—were similarly influenced by her first-hand experiences with the war. Warren, who embraced the natural rights philosophy that undergirded the Patriot cause, was hopeful that it would lead to egalitarian and democratic policies in the new republic and beyond. A Jeffersonian Republican, she took a firm stand against ratification of the Constitution, which put her at odds with a conservative political friend, John Adams, a champion of the document. Likely based on her personal experiences, she opposed women’s lack of access to formal education. Warren lived to age eighty-six. She remained vital even in her final years, continuing to write and correspond with political friends. During the debate over the United States Constitution in 1788, she issued a pamphlet, written under the pseudonym "A Columbian Patriot," that opposed ratification of the document and advocated the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. In 1790, she published a collection of poems and plays under her own name, a highly unusual occurrence for a woman at the time. In 1805, she published one of the earliest histories of the American war for independence, a three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. This was also the first history of the Revolution authored by a woman. Faith Clarke (1618-1675) and Edward Doty (1599-1655) are Ken's 10x Grandparents and Mercy's 2x Grandparents. You can follow this link to connect their common ancestor. Mercy's husband, John Warren (1726-1818) is also involved in the American Revolution.

Kit Hepburn (1878-1951) (7th Cousins, 2x Removed) was a U.S. feminist social reformer and a leader of the suffrage movement in the United States. Hepburn served as president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association before joining the National Woman's Party. Alongside Margaret Sanger, Hepburn co-founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood. She was the mother and namesake of actress Katharine Hepburn and the grandmother and namesake of actress Katharine Houghton. In 1892, her father Alfred Houghton committed suicide, leaving Caroline to raise their three children. Not long after, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Before her death in 1894, she inculcated her daughters, especially Katharine as the eldest, with the importance of a college education. In her will, Caroline Houghton did not name a legal guardian for her daughters, preferring that they be independent to pursue their own aspirations. After her death, the girls' education remained a point of contention between the sisters and their uncle, Amory Houghton Jr. (1837–1909), the family patriarch and president of Corning Glass. While Amory believed young women belonged in finishing school, Katharine had absorbed her mother's insistence on a college education. Kit died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage in March 1951 (discovered by her husband), at the age of 73. Her ashes are buried in the Hepburn family plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. Sarah Tracy (1623-1708) and George Partridge (abt 1613 - bef 1695) are Ken's 8x and Kit's 6x GG Grandparents. You can trace their relationship here.

Princess Diana (1961-1997) (9th Cousin, 2x Removed) was the first wife of Prince Charles. She was the daughter of Edward Spencer and Frances Roche. She was therefore of Royal descent, her father tracing his ancestry back to Charles II and James II, and was to become one of the most famous women in the world. Princess Diana became Lady Diana Spencer after her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer in 1975. She married the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, on July 29, 1981. They had two sons and later divorced in 1996. Diana died on August 31, 1997, from injuries she sustained in a car crash in Paris. She is remembered as the "People's Princess" because of her widespread popularity and global humanitarian efforts. The enormous outpouring of grief, on a global scale, when her life was cut short was a demonstration of the love she gave to people in desperate need, through her fearless work for those with AIDS and casualties of land mines that were taken up by the United Nations, as well as her charity work for cancer and leprosy, and her devotion to her children, William and Harry. Elizabeth Thompson (1594-1676) was Ken's 9X GG Mother and the Princess' 10x GG Mother.

Cloris Leachman (1926-2021) (8th Cousin: paternal side) was an American actress (on Mary Tyler Moore & more), comedienne, vegetarian, animal rights advocate, Miss America 1946 runner-up, dancer on Dancing with the Stars, and whose career spanned more than seven decades. She won many accolades, including eight Primetime Emmy Awards from 22 nominations, making her the most nominated and, along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the most awarded actress in Emmy history. She won an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Daytime Emmy Award. On January 27, 2021, Leachman died in her sleep at her home in Encinitas, California at the age of 94. The cause of death was a stroke with COVID-19 as a contributing factor. Ken's and Cloris 7x Great Grandfathers is the same person, Samuel Allen II (1633-1705) who was a part of the Great Puritan Migration and settled in Bridgewater, Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) (4th Cousins 3x Removed: maternal side) L.M. Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success. The central character, Anne, an orphaned girl, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following. The first novel was followed by a series of sequels with Anne as the central character. Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as 500 short stories and poems. Famously, it wasn't until 1905 that she began writing and submitting Anne of Green Gables. It was rejected by four publishers, and Lucy Maud put it away in a hatbox. In 1907, she revised the manuscript, submitted it, and it was accepted. When it was published in 1908, it went through six editions and sold 19,000 copies in six months. In detail, Ken's 4x Great Grandfather James Cole (1792-?) wife Margaret Clark (1795-1827)'s great grandmother, Janet (Winchester) Simpson (1735-1818) is Lucy Maud's 3x Great Grandmother. In short, Ken's 6x Great Grandparent Janet (Winchester) Simpson (1735-1818) is Lucy's 3x Great Grandmother (if the math is correct).

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) (5th Cousin, 5x Removed) was an American poet born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a prominent family with strong community ties (her grandfather almost single-handedly founded Amherst College). Conversely, Emily lived a mostly reclusive and introverted life, in her later years rarely even leaving her room. Most of her friendships were carried out through correspondence. Due to a promise made by Lavinia, Emily’s sister, most of that correspondence was burned upon the poet’s death. Dickinson was thought of by the locals as eccentric and was known for her proclivity for white clothing and reluctance to greet guests. Though she wrote nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime, few were known of until after her death, when Emily’s sister Lavinia discovered her repository of them. Her first collection of poetry was published four years after her death, though it was heavily edited by two of her personal acquaintances. Because of a feud between sister Lavinia and brother William’s mistress, it was not until 1955 when a complete and mostly unaltered collection of the poet’s work was published by a scholar named Thomas H. Johnson. Emily Dickinson is now considered to be one of the most important American poets. While Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems, and one letter. The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends, and also explore aesthetics, society, nature, and spirituality. She loved to dress in white and was laid to rest in a white coffin a Lady’s Slipper orchid, a knot of blue field violets placed about it, and a vanilla-scented heliotrope. The funeral service was short, with the reading of Emily Bronte’s poem “No Coward Soul of Mine”, one of Emily Dickinson’s favorites. Per Emily’s request, her casket was carried through fields of buttercups to the family plot where she was then buried. Elizabeth Ogden (1664-1742) is Ken's 9x GG Grandmother and Emily's 4th GG Grandmother. You may follow this link to explore the desolated link of their common ancestor.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) (9th Cousin, 1x Removed) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Elizabeth Bishop, an only child, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. After her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old, Bishop’s mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop would later write about the time of her mother's struggles in her short story "In The Village.") Effectively orphaned during her very early childhood, she lived with her grandparents on a farm in Great Village, Nova Scotia, a period she also referred to in her writing. Bishop's mother remained in an asylum until her death in 1934, and the two were never reunited. The house in Nova Scotia is one measure The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia (EBSNS, founded in 1994), undertook to celebrate the life and work of the poet who is often considered by Canadians more Canadian than American. The EBSNS contributed to the purchase of an extensive family archive, which documents Bishop’s Nova Scotia childhood and is housed at Acadia University, Wolfville, N.S. Enoch Hunt (1588-1653) is Ken's 8th GG Grandfather and Elizabeth's 9th GG Grandfather. You can connect their common ancestor.

W.S.Merwin (1927-2019) (14th Cousins: Paternal side), William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and raised in New Jersey and Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of a Presbyterian minister. His numerous collections of poetry, his translations, and his books of prose have won praise over seven decades. Though his early poetry received great attention and admiration, Merwin would continue to alter and innovate his craft with each new book, and at each stage, he served as a powerful influence for poets of his generation and younger poets. For the entirety of his writing career, he explored a sense of wonder and celebrated the power of language, while serving as a staunch anti-war activist and advocate for the environment. He won nearly every award available to an American poet, and he was named U.S. poet laureate twice. A practicing Buddhist as well as a proponent of deep ecology, Merwin lived since the late 1970s on an old pineapple plantation in Hawaii which he has painstakingly restored to its original rainforest state. ^[3] One of Ken's favourite poets and the reason Ken started to stop using punctuation in his own poems (before he knew they were related). Ken and W.S. Merwin's share the same 13x GGMother Margaret Mawie (1540-1590) . Follow this link to view their common ancestor.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) (5th Cousin, 3x Removed), was the author of "Richard Cory." Robinson was one of the most prolific American poets of the early 20th century—and his Collected Poems (1921) won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to poetry—he is remembered now for a few short poems. Robinson was devoted to his art and led a solitary, often make-shift existence; he published virtually nothing during his long career except poetry. The third son of a wealthy New England merchant, Robinson seemed destined for a career in business or the sciences. His father did not encourage his son’s literary talents, but Robinson wrote copiously as a young man, experimenting with verse translations from Greek and Latin poets. In 1891 Edward Robinson provided the funds to send his son to Harvard partly because the aspiring writer required medical treatment that could best be performed in Boston. There Robinson published some poems in local newspapers and magazines and, as he later explained in a biographical piece published in Colophon, collected a pile of rejection slips “that must have been one of the largest and most comprehensive in literary history.” Finally he decided to publish his poems himself, and contracted with Riverside, a vanity press, to produce The Torrent and The Night Before, named after the first and last poems in the collection. Early in 1935, Robinson fell ill with cancer. He stayed hospitalized until his death, correcting galley proofs of his last poem, King Jasper, only hours before slipping into a final coma. “Magazines and newspapers throughout the country took elaborate notice of Robinson’s death,” declared Gilbert, “reminding their readers that he had been considered America’s foremost poet for nearly 20 years and praising his industry, integrity, and devotion to his art.” Susanna Adams (1661-1741) and Daniel Waldo (1657-1737) are Ken's 7x and Edwin's 4x GG Grandparents. You can follow this road to see their common ancestor.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) (12 Cousin, 3x Removed), was the "pen name" for Samuel Clemens. He was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory. Twain patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace suspenders) and a history trivia game. Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages needed only to be moistened before use. Over 25,000 were sold. Twain was an early proponent of fingerprinting as a forensic technique, featuring it in a tall tale in Life on the Mississippi (1883) and as a central plot element in the novel Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894). Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) features a time traveler from the contemporary U.S., using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of historical manipulation became a trope of speculative fiction as alternate histories. In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at Stormfield, his home in Redding, Connecticut, and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film. It is the only known existing film footage of Twain. Twain was born two weeks after Halley's Comet's closest approach in 1835; he said in 1909: I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together". Twain's prediction was accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Stormfield, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth. Catherine Afamsone (1469-?) and John Thompson (1469-1526) are Ken's 14x and Mark's 11x Grandparents. You can follow this river to see their common ancetor.

Robert Frost (1874-1963) (8th Cousin, 4x Removed), won four Pulitzer Prizes for his work; he spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He exploded on the scene after returning from England at the beginning of World War I. Frost met his future love and wife, Elinor White, when they were both attending Lawrence High School. She was his co-valedictorian when they graduated in 1892. His 1916 poem, "The Road Not Taken," is often read at graduation ceremonies across the United States. As a special guest at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Frost became a poetic force and the unofficial "poet laureate" of the United States. In the late 1950s, Frost, along with Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot, championed the release of his old acquaintance Ezra Pound, who was being held in a federal mental hospital for treason due to his involvement with fascists in Italy during World War II. Pound was released in 1958, after the indictments were dropped. Elizabeth Brewster (1590-1666) is Ken's 11 GG Mother and Robert Frost's 7th GG Mother. Follow this like to explore their common ancestor.

ee cummings (1894-1962) (9th Cousin, 1x Removed), between the ages of eight and twenty-two, he wrote a poem a day, exploring many traditional poetic forms. A pacifist, Cummings was imprisoned for several months by French authorities for suspicion of treason due to letters he'd written. He later recounted his jail experiences in the autobiographical novel The Enormous Room, published in 1922. Unable to find a publisher, Cummings self-published much of his work and struggled financially. It was only in the 1940s and '50s, with a burgeoning counterculture, that his style of writing came to be more favored by the masses and he gave live readings before full houses. As one of the most innovative poets of his time, Cummings experimented with poetic form and language to create a distinct personal style. A typical Cummings poem is spare and precise, employing a few keywords eccentrically placed on the page. Some of these words were invented by Cummings, often by combining two common words into a new synthesis. He also revised grammatical and linguistic rules to suit his own purposes. Edith Squire (1587-1672) is Ken's 9x GG Mother and ee cummings's 8x GG Mother. Visit this link to explore their common ancestor.

T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) (8th Cousin, 2x Removed) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic, and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American citizenship. Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915, which was received as a modernist masterpiece. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". Elizabeth Thompson (1594-1676) is Ken's 9x GG Grandmother and T.S. Eliot's 7x GG Grandmother. You can follow this link for their common ancestor.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) (4th Cousin, 5x Removed), poet, writer, naturalist, philosopher, pencil maker, surveyor, Transcendentalist, and inspector of snowstorms. His most famous work was "Walden," a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Today, thousands of people have peed in the Walden Pond, a lake in Concord, Massachusetts, as a way to pay tribute to its namesake. Margaret (Unknown) Brett (1626-1682) was Ken's 8x GG GrandMother and Thoreau's 3x GG Grandmother. You can follow the path to these two individuals by following their common ancestor.

Bill Lishman (1939-2017) (9th Cousin, 1x Removed, 8th Cousin, 2x Removed) was one of the pioneers of ultra-light aviation in Canada, and was the first Canadian to foot-launch and land a rigid-winged aircraft. In 1988, he became the first person to lead the flight of geese with an aircraft, and in 1993, the first to conduct an aircraft-led migration of birds. A movie, Fly Away Home (1996), was made of this. In the late 1980s, Lishman approached Bill Carrick, a naturalist who was working on imprinting on the behaviour of geese. Carrick provided goslings, who Bill and his children worked with daily, eventually doing twice-daily runs on a motorcycle with the geese flying with him, then switching to the ultra-light. In 1988, he became the first person to lead the flight of geese with an aircraft, and in 1993, the first to conduct an aircraft-led migration of birds. n 1994 he co-founded Operation Migration, Inc., and was its Chairperson until 2005. With Operation Migration he flew numerous migrations with geese and cranes, and in 2000 did the major path-finding for the route that has been used to establish the migration of the Whooping Crane between Wisconsin and Florida. Lishman adopted eight sandhill cranes in spring 1995. Each had to be exercised, separately, for three hours daily, by a person wearing a crane puppet. Unlike the geese, if the cranes imprinted on a human, they would attack their own kind. He also was a sculptor (made a replica of Stonehedge near Whitby, ON, of crushed cars). He died of leukemia at the age of 78. Capt. John Seaman (1609-1695) and Marta Moore (1639-1693) are Ken's 9x and Bill's 8x GG Grandparents; Henry Willis (1628-1714) and Mary Pease (1632-1714) are Ken's 9x and Bill's 7x GG Grandparents. You can follow their flight here.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) (4th Cousin, 4x Removed) was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He studied at Bowdoin College and became a professor at Bowdoin and later at Harvard College after spending time in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first wife Mary Potter died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife Frances Appleton died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. He died in 1882. Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day. As a friend once wrote, "no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime". Many of his works helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem "Paul Revere's Ride". He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. Abigail (Andrews) Wadsworth (1647-1723) was Ken's 7x GG Grandmother and Longfellow's 3rd GG Grandmother. You can follow this link to see the common ancestor.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) (9th Cousin), was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. After high school, he was a reporter for a few months for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). Sarah Tracy (1623-1708) is Ken and Ernest's 8x GG Grandmother. You can follow this link for the path to their common ancestor.

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) (8th Cousins, 2x Removed) won two Pulitzer Prizes (in 1947 and in 1974), National Book Award (1960) who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied at Harvard University and Kenyon College. He is best known for his volume Life Studies (1959), but his true greatness as an American poet lies in the astonishing variety of his work. In the 1940s he wrote intricate and tightly patterned poems that incorporated traditional meter and rhyme; when he published Life Studies, he began to write startlingly original personal or confessional poetry in much looser forms and meters; in the 1960s he wrote increasingly public poetry; and finally, in the 1970s, he created poems that incorporated and extended elements of all the earlier poetry. While he was a freshman at Harvard, he visited Robert Frost in Cambridge and asked for feedback on a long poem he had written on the Crusades; Frost suggested that Lowell needed to work on his compression. In an interview, Lowell recalled, "I had a huge blank verse epic on the First Crusade and took it to him all in my undecipherable pencil-writing, and he read a little of it, and said, 'It goes on rather a bit, doesn't it?' And then he read me the opening of Keats's 'Hyperion,' the first version, and I thought all of that was sublime. ^[4]Lowell was a conscientious objector during World War II[25] and served several months at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. He explained his decision not to serve in World War II in a letter addressed to President Franklin Roosevelt on September 7, 1943, stating, "Dear Mr President: I very much regret that I must refuse the opportunity you offer me in your communication of August 6, 1943 for service in the Armed Force."[26][27] He explained that after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, he was prepared to fight in the war until he read about the American terms of unconditional surrender that he feared would lead to the "permanent destruction of Germany and Japan."[27] Before Lowell was transferred to the prison in Connecticut, he was held in a prison in New York City that he later wrote about in the poem "Memories of West Street and Lepke" from his book Life Studies. While at Yaddo in 1949 Lowell became involved in the Red Scare and accused then director, Elizabeth Ames, of harboring communists and being romantically involved with another resident, Agnes Smedley. If Ames were not fired immediately, Lowell vowed to "blacken the name of Yaddo as widely as possible" using his connections in the literary sphere and Washington. The Yaddo board voted to drop all charges against Ames. Lowell was hospitalized many times throughout his adult life due to bipolar disorder, the mental condition previously known as "manic depression".[57] On multiple occasions, Lowell was admitted to the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and one of his poems, "Waking in the Blue", references his stay in this large psychiatric facility.[58] While bipolar disorder was often a great burden to the writer and his family, it also provided the subject for some of Lowell's most influential poetry, as in his book Life Studies. Lowell died in 1977, having suffered a heart attack in a cab in New York City on his way to see his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. He was buried in Stark Cemetery, Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Thomas Graves (1605-1653) and Katherine Gray (1605-1681) are Ken's 9x and Robert's 7x GG Grandparents. You can check out their poetic relationship here.

Bliss Carman (1861-1929) (6th Cousin, 4x Removed) was one of the Confederation Poets, a group which also included Charles G.D. Roberts (his cousin), Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. "Of the group, Carman had the surest lyric touch and achieved the widest international recognition. But unlike others, he never attempted to secure his income by novel writing, popular journalism, or non-literary employment. He remained a poet, supplementing his art with critical commentaries on literary ideas, philosophy, and aesthetics."^[5]He was born William Bliss Carman in Fredericton, in the Maritime province of New Brunswick. "Bliss" was his mother's maiden name. He was the great-grandson of United Empire Loyalists who fled to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution, settling in New Brunswick (then part of Nova Scotia). His literary roots run deep with an ancestry that includes a mother who was a descendant of Daniel Bliss of Concord, Massachusetts, the great-grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His sister, Jean, married the botanist and historian William Francis Ganong. And on his mother's side, he was a first cousin to Charles (later Sir Charles) G. D. Roberts. Martha Moore (1639-1693) is Ken's 9x GG Grandmother and Bliss Carman's 5x GG Grandmother. You can follow this Canadian trail to see their common ancestor.

Alden Nowlan (1933-1983) (10th Cousin, 2x Removed) poet, dramatist, novelist, and speech writer. Winner of the Governor General’s Award for English Poetry in 1967 and recipient of the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 1978, Alden Nowlan is regarded as one of the most original voices of his generation. Nowlan grew up in rural poverty. His mother, Grace Reese, was 15 when he was born, his father, Freeman Nowlan, a manual laborer. Along with his younger sister Harriet, he was largely raised by his paternal grandmother. Nowlan was forced to leave school at age 10 (grade four education). At 14, he worked in a local sawmill, and by 16 he was walking or hitchhiking 30km to the county library where he began to pursue his lifelong passion for learning and reading. For most of his career, Nowlan supported his writing as a nightshift journalist and editor at newspapers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. For Nowlan, poetry was “all about people, and to hell with literature.” Naomi Cocke (1570-1618) is Ken's 12th GG Grandmother and Alden's 9x GG Grandmother. You can follow their maritime trail through their common ancestor.

Robin Williams (1951-2014) (9th Cousin, 1x Removed) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills and a wide variety of voices, he is often regarded as one of the best comedians of all time. Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s, and rose to fame playing the alien Mork in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982). After his first starring film role in Popeye (1980), Williams starred in several critically and commercially successful films including The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990), The Fisher King (1991), Patch Adams (1998), One Hour Photo (2002), and World's Greatest Dad (2009). He also starred in box office successes such as Hook (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997), and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014). He was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards. In August 2014, at age 63, Williams committed suicide at his home in Paradise Cay, California. His widow, Susan Schneider Williams, as well as medical experts and his autopsy, attributed his suicide to his struggle with Lewy body disease. President Barack Obama released a statement upon Williams's death:

Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between ... He arrived in our lives as an alien—but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most—from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets.

At the United Nations Headquarters on August 12, 2014, Robin Williams was celebrated during the opening of the International Youth Day. In the presence of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Assistant Secretary General Thomas Gass paid tribute to Williams by standing on the pulpit of the ECOSOC Chamber and quoting Keating's lines from the 1989 film Dead Poets Society: "Dare to look at things in a different way!" Several fans similarly paid tribute to Williams on social media with photo and video reenactments of Dead Poets Society's "O Captain! My Captain!" scene. He meant the world to legions of people who got to know him on the scene. John Seaman (1609-1695) is Ken's 9x GG Grandfather and Robin Williams' 8x GG Grandfather. You can follow this line to locate their common ancestor.

Johnny "Appleseed" Chapman (1774-1845) (4th Cousin, 8x Removed) spent almost 50 years walking throughout the countryside and stopped walking in 1842. On March 18, 1845, he died of pneumonia at the age of seventy-one. He was visiting his friend, William Worth, in Indiana. He is buried in an unmarked grave near Fort Wayne, Indiana. Johnny's life was so unusual that the primary myth surrounding it is that he never existed. Thanks to researcher Robert Price who set out to explore this myth in the 1950's, we have research on how Johnny lived and cultivated apple orchards. Children learn about Johnny Appleseed at a young age when they learn to sing the Grace Song or see him in a cartoon gathering bright red apples. He seems to have more in common with Whinny the Pooh than George Washington but Johnny Appleseed is one of America's Patriots. Johnny had learned to be an apple orchardist from a neighbor when he was growing up. As he traveled, he set about planting orchards throughout the countryside. He planted for profit, although he was known to accept old clothes for payment. Legend portrays Johnny Appleseed as spreading apple seeds everywhere - along roadsides and in forests. Research suggests that he had something of a business plan and selected the best land for his orchards. He fenced them in with fallen logs and branches. Then he planted and cultivated an orchard as he had learned in Massachusetts. He continued to move west, planting his orchards ahead of the settlements. Mary French (1624-1697) and George Smith (abt 1620 - bef. 1674) are Ken's 11x GG Grandparents and Johnny's 3x GG Grandparents. You can follow the roots to find their common ancestor. Both Mary and George migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration.

Dick Clark (1929-2012) (10th Cousin), was an American radio and television personality, television producer and film actor, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1957 to 1988. He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which transmitted Times Square's New Year's Eve celebrations. Clark was well known for his trademark sign-off, "For now, Dick Clark — so long!", accompanied by a facsimile of a military salute. As host of American Bandstand, Clark introduced rock & roll to many. The show gave many new music artists their first exposure to national audiences, including Iggy Pop, Ike & Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Talking Heads, Simon & Garfunkel and Madonna. Episodes he hosted were among the first in which blacks and whites performed on the same stage, and likewise among the first in which the live studio audience sat without racial segregation. Singer Paul Anka claimed that Bandstand was responsible for creating a "youth culture". Due to his perennial youthful appearance and his largely teenaged audience of American Bandstand, Clark was often referred to as "America's oldest teenager" or "the world's oldest teenager". Clark suffered a stroke in 2004 and died on April 18, 2012, of a heart attack, at the age of 82, following prostate surgery. Tryphosa Lee (1597-1655) and Stephen Tracy (1596-1673) are both Ken's and Dick Clark's 9x GG Grandparents. You can follow this link to chart their common ancestor.

Stan Rogers (1949-1983) (15th Cousin, 3x Removed: Paternal side), a towering figure at 6-foot-4, balding and bearded, Rogers loved not only performing but the people in his songs. Stories about people living near him affected him; details of their lives became elements of his songs. Rogers’ ascent in popularity began with his discovery of the songwriting potential of the Canadian Maritimes, his ancestral home. He plumbed the history and character of Maritimes fishing and mining villages in his outstanding debut album, Fogarty’s Cove. The album is filled to the brim with what are now Stan Rogers classics, such as “Forty-Five Years,” “Fogarty’s Cove,” “Barrett’s Privateers,” and “Make And Break Harbour.” Another album, Northwest Passage may be Rogers’ finest work. It continues his exploration of the songwriting possibilities of Canada, this time the Canadian prairies and Canadian West. The album features some of his strongest lyrics: “Lies,” “Free In The Harbour,” “The Field Behind The Plow,” “The Idiot,” and, of course, the a cappella beginning of “Northwest Passage.” Stan died in a fire on Air Canada flight 797 at Cincinnati, Ohio airport on June 2nd, 1983. He was returning from a folk festival in Kerrville, Texas. Katharene Whiter Hovell (1530-1582) is Ken's 13x GG Mother and Stan Rogers' 10x GG Mother. Follow this link to view their common ancestor.

Jim Thorpe (1888-1953) (7th Cousin, 3x Removed: paternal side) was possibly the greatest athlete of the 20th century. He won gold medals in the 1912 Olympics in the decathlon and pentathlon and played professional football and baseball. In 1950, he was named "the greatest American football player" and as the most outstanding athlete of the first half of the 20th Century. In 1996-2001, he was awarded ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Century. Jim Thorpe attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a school established by a US government authority in an effort "to immerse its students into mainstream Euro-American culture." While attending the school, Jim began to play football and participated in track and field, eventually being named to the All-American team. He was coached by another notable sports figure, Glenn "Pop" Warner. Jim sailed with the US Olympic Team to Stockholm, Sweden to compete in the 1912 Olympic Games. He competed in the pentathlon and the decathlon, winning gold medals in each. He also competed in the high jump and long jump. He returned to the United States victorious and was cheered on by thousands in a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City. Jim was a Native American and a member of the Sac and Fox Nation tribe. Ken's 9x Great Grandfather Capt. John Seaman (~1609 - aft. 1695) is Jim's 6x Great Grandfather.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) (9th Cousin, 3x Removed) was an important mid-20th Century American artist, widely-considered the most-influential painter of the abstract expressionist movement. Despite his notoriously-reclusive and difficult personality, (and always painting with a cigarette in his mouth,) his enormous talent was recognized early in his career by modern art mavens like Peggy Guggenheim and he enjoyed considerable fame and fortune during his most-creative period, 1945-1950. In August 1949 a four-page spread in ‘’Life magazine’’ asked: "’’Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?’’" Many contemporaries believed that to be true. Jackson Pollock was best-known for his “drip style” wherein he poured and dripped liquid resin-based paint onto large canvasses aligned flat on the floor, while he practically danced around them, quickly adding color and texture until he accomplished his internal creative vision. A recognized creative genius, Jackson Pollock also had a “dark side”. He was mercurial, volatile, and struggled with alcoholism his entire life. Although he married fellow American artist, Lee Krasner (1908-1984) in 1945, he enjoyed numerous extra-marital affairs and died at the young age of 44 years old in a nighttime automobile accident, driving while under the influence, with his at-that-time mistress, Ruth Klingman, and another young female companion, Edith Metzger, who was also killed. His artist widow, who survived his passing for nearly 30 years, carefully managed his estate, ensuring that his reputation remained intact. She spearheaded a very-successful retrospective exhibition of his work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art shortly after his tragic death in 1956 and a larger-more comprehensive review in 1967. The major figure of American Abstract Expressionism, Pollock created his best works, his famous drips, between 1947 and 1950. After those fascinating years, comparable to Picasso’s blue period or van Gogh’s final months in Auvers, he abandoned the drip, and his latest works are often bold, unexciting works. ^[6]. Check out his items on Sotheby's. Thomas Newman (1614-1675) is Ken's 11x GG Grandfather and Jackson Pollock's 8th GG Grandfather. You can follow this link to paint their common ancestor.

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) (11th Cousin, 4x Removed) was the main figure of American painting of his era; he was a breath of fresh air for the American art scene, which was "stuck" in academic painting and the more romantic Hudson River School. Homer's loose and lively brushstroke is almost impressionistic.^[7] His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist and Homer's first teacher. She and her son had a close relationship throughout their lives. Homer took on many of her traits, including her quiet, strong-willed, terse, sociable nature; her dry sense of humor; and her artistic talent. Homer's father was a volatile, restless businessman who was always looking to "make a killing". When Homer was thirteen, Charles gave up the hardware store business to seek a fortune in the California gold rush. When that failed, Charles left his family and went to Europe to raise capital for other get-rich-quick schemes that did not pay off. In 1859, he opened a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York City, the artistic and publishing capital of the United States. Until 1863, he attended classes at the National Academy of Design, and studied briefly with Frédéric Rondel, who taught him the basics of painting.[10] In only about a year of self-training, Homer was producing excellent oil work. Harper's Magazine sent Homer to the front lines of the American Civil War (1861–1865), where he sketched battle scenes and camp life, the quiet moments as well as the chaotic ones. An in-depth bio can be found on Wikipedia complete with his paintings or you can check out the $4M per paintings sold on Sotheby's Agnes Barton (1530-1597) is Ken's 11x GG Grandmother and Winslow's 7x GG Grandmother. You can draw a line that connects their common ancestor.

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) (10th Cousin, 5x Removed), was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist. He gained international fame in 1947 with the publication of his first book, Fearful Symmetry, which led to the reinterpretation of the work of English poet William Blake. Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is acknowledged as one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The intelligence service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police spied on Frye, watching his participation in the anti–Vietnam War movement, an academic forum about China, and activism to end South African apartheid^[8]. There is a Northrop Frye statue outside the entrance of Moncton Public Library. Margaret Mawie (1540-1590) is Ken's 13x GG Mother and Northrop's 9x GG Mother. You can follow the path of their common ancestor.

Samuel Morse (1791-1872) (6th Cousin, 7x Removed), inventor of the Morse Code . . . While attending art school to be a painter in London, Samuel was taught by an American named Benjamin West. Due to Morse's charismatic, warm personality, he made many other friends such as Charles Leslie, another painter, and a poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Morse wins a gold medal at an art exhibition in London and returns home in 1815. He proceeded to open an art studio, and in search of commissions to earn himself money, he travels to New Hampshire. There, he met his first wife; Lucretia Pickering Walker, who was 16 at the time. In 1819, the city of Charleston, South Carolina commissioned Morse to paint a portrait of President James Monroe. In 1825, Morse's wife Lucretia died unexpectedly while he was away on a painting commission. The slowness of communications at the time meant he did not get home until after she was buried. Morse continues his life largely as an artist until autumn of 1835 when he creates a recording telegraph with a moving paper ribbon. In December of 1837, Morse withdrew from painting to work on the telegraph. Morse described his telegraph as "including a dot and dash code to represent numbers, a dictionary to turn the numbers into words and a set of sawtooth type for sending signals." On April 2nd, 1872, Morse died of pneumonia at the age of 80. Susanna Riddlesdale (1584-1658) is Ken's 12x GG Grandmother and Samuel's 5x GG Grandmother. You can follow this line of code to see their common ancestor.

Francis M. Archibald Ph.D. (1899-1955) (4th Cousins, 1x Removed) was a chemical engineer, attending Acadia Univerity, McGill Univerity, getting his Masters in 1926 in the University of Toronto, and his PhD. in 1928 also at UofT. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Packing of Solid Particles"). Immediately after graduation in 1928, he worked with Standard Oil and spent his entire career with the company. In 1953 he moved his family to Durban, South Africa where he served as technical advisor to the Standard Vacuum Oil Company to assist in setting up the first oil refinery in South Africa. In his lifetime, he had 44 US patents in his name. You can follow this Google Patents Search for details (returned 61 results). Here is a snapshot of his inventions by the company as well as co-inventor: Here are a few:

• Ethers from reactive acid liquor(Standard Alcohol Co.
• Adsorption of olefins by petroleum coke [Standard Oil Development Co)
• Purification of oil soluble sulphonate (Standard Oil Development Co)
• Alcohol process (Standard Oil Development Co)

Benjamin Allen II (1733-1823) and Sarah Somers (1753-1824) are Ken's 4x and Francis' 3x GG Grandparents. You can follow the chemistry of their relationship here.

Charles Peirce (1839-1914) (8th Cousin, 4x Removed) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years, Peirce considered himself, first and foremost, a logician. He made major contributions to logic, a subject that, for him, encompassed much of what is now called epistemology and the philosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics, of which he is a founder, which foreshadowed the debate among logical positivists and proponents of the philosophy of language that dominated 20th-century Western philosophy. Additionally, he defined the concept of abductive reasoning, as well as rigorously formulated mathematical induction and deductive reasoning. As early as 1886, he saw those logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits. The same idea was used decades later to produce digital computers. In 1934, the philosopher Paul Weiss called Peirce "the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician".[13] Webster's Biographical Dictionary said in 1943 that Peirce was "now regarded as the most original thinker and greatest logician of his time" ^[9]Ann Grafton (1570-1639) is Ken's 11x GG Grandmother and Charles' 7x GG Grandmother. You can follow this logical link to their common ancestor.

Joseph Freeman (1765-1837) (4th Cousin, 6x Removed) was a colonel in the Queen's County militia, and after the War of 1812 he was a member of Parliament for twenty-five years. He had commanded the Liverpool privateers Charles Mary Wentworth, Nymph, and Duke of Kent in the French wars, between 1798 and 1805. The War of 1812 found him prospering as a mariner and merchant, forty-four years of age, keen, seasoned, ripe in experience. He was a strict disciplinarian and kept his privateer in the same state of efficiency as if she had flown the whiplash pendant of the Royal Navy. Every Sunday morning the hands were turned up and he read them the articles of war. His command was the ex-American privateer Thorn, which had been captured by the British frigate Tenedos, October 31st, 1812, and sold in Halifax as a prize ... Renamed the Sir John Sherbrooke by her purchasers, in compliment to the governor of Nova Scotia^{[10] [11]} More on his role in the War of 1812, Thomas Freeman, Joseph's brother, and his crew were homeward bound from the West Indies when the large American frigate Constitution captured them and their ship. This is how Thomas Freeman and the crew found out that just a few days earlier the United States had declared war on the United Kingdom. After finally being released, having spent months as a prisoner on board the USS Constitution, Thomas Freeman took Enos Collins' ship, the Liverpool Packet, out for a cruise, that earned him, and his partner, Snow Parker, enough money to buy a ship. For 530 pounds, they purchased the Salem privateer "Revenge", formerly "John and George", taken by the British man-of-war schooner "Paz" off the Jeddore Ledges. Revenge was what Freeman had in mind, but he changed her name to "Retaliation", a more subtle expression of his intentions. At 71 tons and 60 feet long, she was only slightly larger than the Liverpool Packet, and mounted two 4-pounders and a long 12-pounder on a pivot. Freeman added a pair of 12-pound carronades. Retaliation sailed for the New England shore in the first week of March, with 50 men and a privateer's commission dated February 10, 1813.^[12] He was also the captain of the following boats:

Charles Mary Wentworth 1798-1799 (some say it was the first warship ever built that was crewed and commanded by Canadians)

Duke of Kent 1800

Nymph 1800

Duke of Kent 1805

Sir John Sherbrooke 1813.

Tryphosa Lee (1597-1655) and Stephen Tracy (1596-1673) are Ken's 9x and Joseph's 3x GG Grandparents. Follow this link to connect the dots of their common ancestor. Of interest, Ezra Doty, Ken's cousin, also fought int he War of 1812 for the U.S.

George Alfred Trenholm (1807-1876) (2nd Cousins 5 Removed: paternal side) of the Charleston, South Carolina. George A. Trenholm was one of the most distinguished citizens of Charleston, in the middle and later portions of the nineteenth century. A great merchant, a statesman of high rank, a man of unusual attainments, he used his talents always for the benefit of Charleston, and the state. With John Fraser, a Scotch merchant, he soon became a force in mercantile affairs on a large scale. John Fraser & Co., owned ships, and established agencies in several European ports, and, when the war between the states came, they placed their resources at the service of their country, bringing in supplies by blockade-running Steamships, and cooperating with the Government of the Confederate States of America, and continued to so act until the war ended when, naturally, the United States government endeavored to suppress the House. Mr. Trenholm was called to the counsels of the Confederate States and left his residence in Columbia on 16th July 1864, for Richmond, and was Secretary of the Treasury until 7th April 1865. He was imprisoned in the Charleston Jail by the United States authorities on 13th June and sent thence on 18th June to Fort Pulaski. On the 25th of June, he was paroled and returned to Charleston, on 12th July he was again arrested, and he remained a prisoner until 14th October. At a meeting of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Elias Horry Frost, himself an honored President of the Chamber, thus spoke of Mr. Trenholm: "The most noteworthy instance of Mr. Trenholm's greatness was when two years before his death, at the call of his fellow-citizens, he gave up the loved and pleasant society of his home, in health then failing renounced his ease and comfort, relinquished the care of his business, laid aside the remembrance of his fame, forgot that he was a Prince among Merchants and had sat in Cabinets, an adviser in the struggle of nations, laid aside the pride which might well have led him to believe it his due to be called only to the highest places in the land, and for months gave his time for the Public good to his duties as a member of the Legislature of his State." It was the universal respect for his character and wisdom, which was recognized even by the Adventurers and freedmen who then controlled the Legislature of South Carolina, that caused all to look to his influence for the amelioration of dreadful conditions. He did much to t impress even such men as were robbing the State and was listened to and treated with respect by them. Handsome in face and mien with the manners of a Prince, he charmed everyone with whom he came in contact, and all learned to admire a great man with no affectations, nor any desire to seem to be anything he was not. ^[13] Ken 's 6x Great Grandfather and George's Great Grandfather was the same person, Robert Trenholm (1712-1779). That would make Ken and the Confederate Secretary of State for USA 2nd Cousins, 5x Removed. Note this Robert Trenholm is the Trenholm who, along with his brothers, made the first Yorkshire Migration from England to Point de Bute, New Brunswick, in 1772.

Capt. Silas Soule (1838-1865) (6th Cousin, 5x Removed) was an American abolitionist, Kansas Territory Jayhawker, anti-slavery militant, and a friend of John Brown and Walt Whitman. (The “Jayhawkers,” a self-appointed anti-slavery band of guerillas that plundered political enemies in the bloody pre-rebellion border war between Kansas “free-staters” and Missouri slave owners. The Jayhawk was a fictitious creature, deriving its name from two predatory birds that unmercifully stalk prey before devouring it, much like the free-state Jayhawkers that hunted and terrorized the despised Missouri aristocracy.^[14]) Later, during the American Civil War, he joined the Colorado volunteers, rising to the rank of Captain in the Union Army. Silas Soule was in command of Company D, 1st Colorado Cavalry, which was present at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864, when he refused an order to join the Sand Creek massacre: where one hundred and fifty unarmed Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children were murdered. In fact, as the Captain of a regiment, if anyone in his regiment obeyed the order, he would shoot his own men himself. His letters and testimony about the events of that day are the reason the truth of Sand Creek is known as a massacre rather than a glorious battle. During the subsequent inquiry, Soule testified against the massacre's commanding officer, [Chivington], and soon after, he was assassinated in Denver. A newspaper article explained this to be the third attempt on his life in the previous four months. Silas Soule was born into a family of abolitionists in Bath, Maine. He was raised in Maine and Massachusetts and, in 1854, his family became part of the newly formed New England Emigrant Aid Company, an organization whose goal was to help settle the Kansas Territory and bring it into the Union as a free state. His father and brother arrived in Kansas, near Lawrence (of which the Soule family was one of the founding families), in November 1854. Silas, his mother, and two sisters came the following summer. Shortly after the family's arrival at Coal Creek, a few miles south of Lawrence near present-day Vinland, Amasa Soule, Silas's father, established his household as a stop on the Underground Railroad. At the young age of 17, Silas was escorting slaves, escapees from Missouri, north to freedom. His sister, Anne Julia Soule Prentiss, told of her family's early experience in Maine, Massachusetts, and Kansas in a 1929 interview: "Our house was on the 'Underground Railway'. John Brown was often there... My brother, Silas, and Brown were close friends. Silas went out on many a foray with him. I recall well when Brown came to our cabin one night with thirteen slaves, men, women and children. He had run them away from Missouri. Brown left them with us. Father would always take in all the Negroes he could. Silas took the whole thirteen from our home eight miles to Mr. Grover's stone barn..." You can peruse the Two 1865 Letters Regarding the Sand Creek Massacre from Silas to his mother. Silas, only a teenager, was one of the most popular members of the Jayhawkers (because of his bravery, skill with a gun, and sense of humor). This elite group raided pro-slavery towns, kidnapped slaves to bring them into freedom, and helped imprisoned Underground Railroad conductors escape jail. Though they called themselves the "Jayhawker Ten," the group was commonly known as either the "Immortal Ten" by those they fought with - or the "Terrible Ten" by those they fought against. Silas was particularly skilled at helping people escape jail. In late 1859, he was contacted to help with a high-profile prison break. John Brown, a famous abolitionist and family friend of the Soules, had tried to organize a revolt of armed slaves in Harper's Ferry, Virgnia. The revolt failed and Brown was sentenced to death. Silas was supposed to get himself arrested, and from there try to sneak Brown out of prison. Silas never got the chance to do so - when Brown learned a rescue attempt was being planned, he sent a message that he would rather become a martyr for his cause. John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859. Silas, himself, two weeks after getting married, would hear gun shots in the alley and go to explore and help, he walked into a trap. Waiting in the dark alley were two assassins who shot Silas, killing him instantly. He would be assassinated at the age of 26. Faith Clarke (1618-1675) and Edward Doty (1599-1655) are Ken's 10x and Silas' 5x Grandparents. You can view this link to their relationship.

Stephen Harper (1959 - living) (5th Cousins, 1x Removed), was the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada for nearly a decade, from February 6, 2006, to November 4, 2015. Harper has served as the chairman of the International Democrat Union since February 2018. Over his career, Stephen Harper was elected to the House of Commons seven times, and served nine years as prime minister of Canada, winning three elections as party leader. Harper was the first prime minister to come from the modern Conservative Party of Canada, though older centre-right conservative parties have been active since Canada's founding. Harper was one of the founding members of the Reform Party of Canada and under that banner was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1993 in Calgary West. He did not seek re-election in the 1997 federal election. Harper instead joined and later led the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative lobbyist group.[2] In 2002, he succeeded Stockwell Day as leader of the Canadian Alliance, the successor to the Reform Party, and returned to parliament as Leader of the Official Opposition by winning Preston Manning's former seat. In 2003, Harper reached an agreement with the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, Peter MacKay, for the merger of their two parties to form the Conservative Party of Canada. Harper was subsequently elected as the party's first leader in March 2004. From 2002 to 2015 as party leader, leader of the Official Opposition, and then prime minister, Harper represented the riding of Calgary Southwest in Alberta. In the 2015 federal election, Harper won his seat of Calgary Heritage but overall the Conservative Party lost power following nearly a decade of governance. Harper continued to serve as prime minister until November 4, 2015, when Justin Trudeau and a Liberal Party of Canada government was officially sworn in. Dorothy Patton (1750-1830) and Richard Thompson (1744-1821) are Ken's 4x Grandparents and Stephen Harper's 5x Grandparents. Richard and Dorothy came from Yorkshire and lived in Point de Bute, New Brunswick (at the same time as Robert Trenholm) before moving to Nova Scotia in 1791. You can follow this link to link their common ancestor.

R.B. Bennett (1870-1947) (8th Cousin, 5x Removed), was the 14th Prime Minister of Canada serving five years between August 7, 1930 - October 23, 1935. A lawyer, businessman, and politician; born 3 July 1870 in Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick. Two economic recessions greatly influenced Richard "R.B." Bennett’s life, the depression in the 1870s that destroyed his father’s shipbuilding business and the Great Depression that destroyed his political career. His grandfather, Nathan Murray Bennett, had established a shipyard at Hopewell Cape, New Brunswick. Henry, his father, became a partner in the firm in 1868, but by the time R.B. was born in 1870, the firm faced increasing competition from steamship manufacturers. Over the course of R.B.’s childhood, the family slipped into genteel poverty. He once told a friend, “I’ll always remember the pit from which I was [dug] and the long uphill road I had to travel.” Only a small inheritance enabled the Bennetts to send their eldest child to Normal School in Fredericton. After R.B. graduated, he taught in Douglastown and in his spare time worked in a law office. By 1890 he had saved enough money to attend law school at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1927 he was elected leader of the Conservative Party. In his acceptance speech, he admitted that he was a wealthy man, but emphasized that he had made his money from hard work. The Conservatives won the election of 1930 by promising measures that would lessen the effects of the Great Depression on Canadians. It was a promise that R.B. found difficult to keep once in office. Although his initiative to adopt preferential tariffs helped somewhat, as the Depression dragged on, he was seen as an ineffectual leader. In 1935 he announced a Roosevelt-inspired New Deal, but it was too late and Mackenzie King’s Liberals swept the Conservatives out of office in the election that fall. R.B. remained as Opposition leader until 1938 when he left Canada to live the rest of his life in Surrey, England. In 1941, R.B. became the first and only former Canadian Prime Minister to be elevated to the peerage as Viscount Bennett, of Mickleham in the County of Surrey and of Calgary and Hopewell in the Dominion of Canada. It was given in recognition of his unsalaried work during World War II in the Ministry of Aircraft Production, which was managed by his lifelong friend Lord Beaverbrook. Bennett took an active role in the House of Lords, attending until his death in 1947. Judith Gater (1589-1654) and John Perkins Sr (bef 1583 - bef 1654) are Ken's 12x Grandparents and R.B.'s 7x Grandparents. You can follow this link for their common ancestor. They migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration (1620-1640).

Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915) (7th Cousin, 6x Removed), was the 7th Prime Minister of Canada serving just ten weeks between May 1, 1896 - July 8, 1896. A Father of Confederation, attending all three conferences (Charlottetown, Quebec City, and London). 7th (final) Premier of the Colony of Nova Scotia (1864-67) as the position would be abolished upon Confederation. A doctor and politician; born 2 July 1821 near Amherst, Nova Scotia. In 1867 he entered federal politics and was Nova Scotia's only representative in favour of Confederation. Tupper became Prime Minister 1 May 1896. Tupper and his colleagues had introduced remedial legislation to protect the educational rights of the French-speaking minority in Manitoba. Tupper and the Conservatives were badly defeated in the general election in June. He resigned on July 8, having served only ten weeks as prime minister, the shortest tenure in Canadian history. He continued in Parliament as leader of the Opposition but was defeated in the election of 1900. On retirement, he lived in Bexleyheath, England. Judith Gater (1589-1654) and John Perkins Sr (bef 1583 - bef 1654) are Ken's 12x Grandparents and R.B.'s 6x Grandparents. You can follow this link for their common ancestor. Yes, this is the same Judith and John Perkins who were the 7x Grandparents of R. B. Bennett. You can follow this link for their common ancestor.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) (6th Cousin, 5x Removed) was the 16th President of the United States (1861-1865) which was dominated by the American Civil War. He was also known as Honest Abe because he was always honest with people; and, most famously, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.” Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion. The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…. ” On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln’s death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died. ^[15] Ann UNKNOWN (1605-1650) and Thomas Jones (1602-1680) are Ken's 10x and Abraham's 5x GG Grandparents. You can follow this link to their common ancestor.

Calvin Coolidge , Jr. (1872-1933) (8th Cousin), 30th President of the United States (1923—1929), 29th Vice President of the United States (1921—1923), and 48th Governor of Massachusetts (1919—1921). He became president unexpectedly (after President Warren Harding had died unexpectedly) at 2:30 on the morning of 03 August 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible. With the nickname of "Silent Cal," President Coolidge was known for being a man of few words, a very dry sense of humor, and personal integrity. By politics, he was a Republican, by religion, a Congregationalist.[1] He was a fiscal conservative and believed in small government, beliefs which many Republicans still share. The administration preceding his was known for extravagance and scandal. During the first part of term, he was able to restore public confidence in the federal government. On 07 July 1924, a defining event of his life occurred. On that day his son Calvin aged 16, died of blood poisoning. President Coolidge was not the same after that loss. He seemed to be suffering from depression and refused to run for a second term. He passed away on 05 January 1933 in Northampton, Massachusetts, and was buried in Plymouth Notch Cemetery, Plymouth, Windsor, Vermont. The cause of death was heart failure. Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. Susanna Adams (1661-1741) and Daniel Waldo (1657-1737) are Ken's and Calvin's 7th GG Grandparents. You can follow this link to their common ancestor.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) (4th Cousin, 6x Removed), 6th President of the United States (from 1825-1829), 8th United States Secretary of State (1817-1825), and a US Senator from Massachusetts (1803-1808). Beginning at the age of 14, he served as a secretary to Francis Dana on a mission to Saint Petersburg, Russia. He married Louisa Catherine (Johnson), the daughter of a poor American merchant. After leaving office In Mar 1829, he was elected as U.S. Representative from Massachusetts in 1830, serving for the last 17 years of his life with greater acclaim than he had achieved as president. He was one of only 2 presidents to serve in Congress after his term of office, He was elected to 9 terms, serving as a Representative from Massachusetts for 17 years, from 1831 until his death. He died on 23 Feb 1848 in Washington, D.C. after collapsing on the Floor of the House. John Quincy Adams once wrote, "Could I have chosen my own genius and condition, I would have made myself a great poet." Although literary fame would escape the sixth president of the United States, throughout his life Adams was a serious reader and writer of poetry. He was the first chair of The Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory (an endowed chair at Harvard University established) in 1804 and endowed by the will of a Boston merchant, Nicholas Boylston. There have only been 13 chairs since 1804. Read a letter by John here to Nicholas. How are they related? John Quincy Adams's 3rd Great Grandfather was Henry Adams (1583-1646), and Henry Adams was Ken’s 9X Great Grandfather.

John Adams (1735-1826) (3rd Cousin, 7x Removed), 2nd President of the United States (1797-1801), 1st Vice President of the United States (1789 - 1797). He was preceded by George Washington and succeeded by Thomas Jefferson. John Adams has been noted as the Founding Father in the American Revolution. Adams' great-great-grandfather, Henry Adams, emigrated circa 1636 from Braintree, England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Henry's 89 grandchildren earned him the modern nickname of "Founder of New England." John Adams's 2nd Great Grandfather was Henry Adams (1583-1646), and Henry Adams was Ken’s 9X Great Grandfather.

Samuel Adams (1722-1803) (3rd Cousin, 7x Removed), signed the Declaration of Independence, and was the 4th Governor of Massachusetts (1793-1797). In the fifteen years before the American Revolution, that is, 1760 to 1775, Samuel Adams was above all the other patriots of that era, foremost in encouraging his fellow men to open rebellion. The Tories of that day said that Samuel was "the first man to speak of Independence," which to British sympathizers meant treason. It was Samuel Adams who rallied the Bostonians to proclaim their opposition to the Stamp Tax in 1755. It was Samuel Adams who got his fellow citizens to vote against the trade tax that Parliament imposed on sugar. It was Samuel Adams who organized the Boston Tea Party. When the early Patriots banded themselves together and called themselves the Sons of Liberty, the British called this organization "Sam Adams Mohawks". The greatest personal drive for independence in America prior to the Battle of Bunker Hill was coaching skill and leadership of Samuel Adams, yet this man sought no credit for it all. Probably the greatest tribute made in regard to this man was made by the Tory Boston Governor Hutchinson when he said, "Samuel Adams is leader of the greatest adventure in democracy this world has ever seen." Samuel Adams's 2nd Great Grandfather was Henry Adams (1583-1646), and Henry Adams was Ken’s 9X Great Grandfather.

Huey Long (1893-1935) (8th Cousin, 2x Removed) was the 40th Governor of Louisiana (1928-1932) and a US Senator from Louisiana (1932-1935) until his assassination in 1935. "He remains a controversial figure in Louisiana history, with critics and supporters debating whether he was a dictator, demagogue, or populist." In 1929 the first concrete road in Louisiana was built, as part of Huey Long's $100,000,000 highway program. It ran from the community of Joyce to the junction of Dugdemona Bayou in Winn Parish.[7] In his four-year term as governor, Long increased the miles of paved highways in Louisiana from 331 to 2,301, plus an additional 2,816 miles of gravel roads. By 1936, the infrastructure program begun by Long had completed some 9,000 miles of new roads, doubling the state's road system. He built 111 bridges and started construction on the first bridge over the lower Mississippi River, the Huey P. Long Bridge in Jefferson Parish, near New Orleans. He built the new Louisiana State Capitol, at the time the tallest building in the South. All of these construction projects provided thousands of much-needed jobs during the Great Depression. Huey Long believed that everyone has a right to an education. He meant everyone: black, white, rich, poor. When he became Governor he pushed through the legislature a bill providing free textbooks to every Louisiana student. In addition, he saw that every community had a school and that busing was provided to get the students to school. He expanded the Louisiana State University system and provided scholarships. He created adult vocational schools, and an adult education program that taught 100,000 illiterate adults to read. Senator Huey P. Long was shot on Sunday, September 8, 1935, at 9:20 p.m., in the corridor of the Louisiana Capitol Building. His alleged assailant, Dr. Carl A. Weiss, was shot and killed immediately by Long's bodyguards. The former Governor died about thirty hours later at 4:04 a.m. Monday, September 10. There was no modern crime scene investigation unit in 1935. No autopsies were performed on either Long or Weiss. The gun disappeared. There was a brief coroner's inquiry, but questions remained and still do to this day. Why did Weiss commit this act? He was not a fan of Long, but his known political reasons didn't seem adequate for the finality of the action taken. Was it possible that Long was actually shot by his own bodyguard over-reacting to an innocent action by Weiss? Weiss's body was exhumed in 1991 to see if modern science could solve the mystery. The results of the post-exhumation investigation were inconclusive; the mystery remains. A modern police investigation conducted about the same time concluded he was shot once, the bullet passing completely through his body and exiting through his back. Said Donald R. Moreau, the state police lieutenant who headed the renewed inquiry, "There was one assassin. That assassin was Dr. Carl A. Weiss." Capt. John Seaman (1609-1695) and Marta Moore (1639-1693) are Ken's 9x and Huey's 7th GG Grandparents. You can follow how Ken and Huey are related here

Joseph Smith (1805-1844) (5th Cousins, 6x Removed) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religion that continues to the present with millions of global adherents. Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. By 1817, he had moved with his family to western New York, the site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. Smith said he experienced a series of visions, including one in 1820 during which he saw "two personages" (whom he eventually described as God the Father and Jesus Christ), and another in 1823 in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates called the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints" or "Mormons", and Smith announced a revelation in 1838 which renamed the church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west, planning to build a communalistic American Zion. They first gathered in Kirtland, Ohio, and established an outpost in Independence, Missouri, which was intended to be Zion's "center place". During the 1830s, Smith sent out missionaries, published revelations, and supervised the construction of the Kirtland Temple. The collapse of the church-sponsored Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company and violent skirmishes with non-Mormon Missourians caused Smith and his followers to establish a new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he became a spiritual and political leader. In 1844, when the Nauvoo Expositor criticized Smith's power and practice of polygamy, Smith and the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of their printing press, inflaming anti-Mormon sentiment.[12] Fearing an invasion of Nauvoo, Smith rode to Carthage, Illinois, to stand trial, but was killed when a mob stormed the jailhouse. Smith published many revelations and other texts that his followers regard as scripture. His teachings discuss the nature of God, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His followers regard him as a prophet comparable to Moses and Elijah, and several religious denominations consider themselves the continuation of the church that he organized, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ. Note: Between 1841- 1844, he married or was sealed to about 30 additional women, ten of whom were already married to other men. Some of these polyandrous marriages were done with the consent of the first husbands, and some plural marriages may have been considered "eternity-only" sealings (meaning that the marriage would not take effect until after death). Ten of Smith's plural wives were between the ages of fourteen and twenty; others were over fifty. The practice of polygamy was kept secret from both non-Mormons and most members of the church during Smith's lifetime. Samuel Hunt (1633-1707) and Elizabeth Redding (1635-1707) are Ken's 10x and Joseph's 4x GG Grandparents. You can follow this link to track their relationship.

Bess (Daniels) Allison (1886-1912) and Hudson Allison (1881-1912) (7th Cousin, 2x Removed) died as passengers on the RMS Titanic. Bess (born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and Hudson (born in Chesterville, Ontario) met on a train in 1907 between Montreal and Winnipeg and married later in that same year in Milwaukee. The Allisons were devout Methodists - they taught Sunday school, Bible Classes, and Hudson often served as a lay preacher. In 1911, they began the Allison Stock Farm near Winchester, Ontario, and built a new house in Westmount, Quebec. They had two residences. Hudson (or Hud) was a wealthy Montreal stockbroker known as one of three men of the "Methodist Mafia" in Montreal.

They had two children (Hudson "Trevor" Allison and Helen "Loraine" Allison), who were also on the Titanic. In addition, traveling companions including a cook (Amelia Mary Brown), a chauffeur (George Swane), a maid (Sarah Daniels who was also Bess' sister), a nurse (Alice Catherine Cleaver). All onboard the Titanic.

Like many others, the Allisons had altered travel plans to sail back with old friends on Titanic. They paid £151 16s for three cabins on the Upper Deck C-22/24/26. (ticket number113781). Mr and Mrs Allison were in one suite, Sarah Daniels and Loraine in another and Alice Cleaver and Trevor in the third. The other household servants travelled second class. On the last night of their lives, Hudson and Bess Allison sat down to dinner with Major Peuchen (one of the few adult male passengers on a lifeboat that night and thus forever marked as a coward by his peers. In 1987, Peuchen's wallet was recovered from the area around the remains of Titanic; streetcar tickets, a traveler's cheque, and his calling card were found inside.) and Harry Molson (Mayor of Dorval, inherited his wealth from his childless uncle who owned Molson Brewery) , and Bess brought Loraine briefly into the Jacobean dining room so she could see how pretty it was.

There are two different stories about what happened after the iceberg hit: one by Major Peuchen; a second by Bessie's sister. First, Peuchen's story: When the Titanic hit the iceberg, Alice Cleaver took Trevor and left with him in lifeboat 11 . Bess Allison was put in a different boat with Loraine, but refused to leave the ship without her baby Trevor (she did not . She dragged Loraine out of the boat and started searching for Alice and Trevor. "Mrs Allison could have gotten away in perfect safety," Major Arthur Peuchen told the Montreal Daily Star "But somebody told her Mr Allison was in a boat being lowered on the opposite side of the deck, and with her little daughter she rushed away from the lifeboat. Apparently, she reached the other side to find that Mr Allison was not there. Meanwhile, our boat had put off." Major Peuchen, also gave this account of Mrs. Allison's last moments "She had gone to the deck without her husband, and, frantically seeking him was directed by an officer to the other side of the ship. She failed to find Mr. Allison and was quickly hustled into one of the collapsible life-boats, and when last seen by Major Peuchen she was toppling out of the half-swamped boat."

Here is the story as told by Bessie's sister. "My sister died rather than leave her husband when the officers refused to let both into the lifeboat. She said life was not worth living alone and she went down, even smiling, with her arm around Loraine. When the boat struck few realized there was any danger. Loraine and Bessie laughed and went to dress. When we stood together at the rail, as the boats were being sent away. Then came the order. 'Women only' and an officer tried to put Bessie in the boats. 'Not without my husband' she cried. 'You must' cried the officer, but Bessie threw her arms around Hudson's neck and refused and refused to leave him. Then after the officer stopped trying to force her into the boat, she ran to me, pushed me into the boat, and threw little Trevor at me. The boat was full (no room for the little girl) and she grasped Lorraine in one arm, her husband with the other, and stood waving her hand, and it seemed to me, smiling as she saw us rowing to away. The last I saw of her, just as the boat started to plunge to the bottom, was Bessie turning to her husband for a farewell kiss. As the water washed to their knees, Loraine was holding to her mother's skirts". The ending of story differs from the story told of the Major. ^[16]

Survivors: Trevor (11-month-old son), his nurse Alice, Bess's sister Sarah, the cook Amelia, and the chauffeur George. Note: Trevor returned home to Canada, where he was raised by his aunt and uncle, George and Lillian Allison; he .would only live to the age of 18 as he died of food poisoning (Ptomaine Poisoning) in Maine USA. Loraine is believed to be the only first-class child to die in the Titanic Disaster.

Only Hudson's body was recovered:

• NO. 135. - MALE.
• CLOTHING - Leather coat; blue suit; grey silk muffler.
• EFFECTS - Keys; letters; photos; stock book; three pocket diaries; one C. P. Railway ticket book; two pocket books; card case; $143.00 in notes; chain with insurance medals; £15 in gold; $100.00 Thomas Cook & Sons travellers' cheque; £35 in notes; gold cuff links; diamond solitaire ring; gold stud; knife; silver tie clip; $4.40 in odd coins; traveller's ticket.

Sarah Tracy (1623-1708) and George Partridge (abt 1613 - bef 1695) are Ken's 8x GG Grandparents and Bess's 6x GG Grandparents. George and Sarah migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration. Follow this ship to see Bess' and Hudson's common ancestors to Ken.

Barbara (McKay) Ross (1864-1901) (3rd Cousin, 2x Removed) born in PEI, wife of the Yukon Governor, drowned at sea. Barabara married a Moose Jaw pioneer rancher and member of the Northwest Territory Legislative Council, James Hamilton Ross, at his parents' home in London, Ontario on November 23rd 1886. In 1901, James was appointed Governor of the Yukon and a fine Government House was built. 'Mrs. Ross was a true helpmate, both socially and in a public career. Attractive, of engaging manners, possessed of keen mental acumen and with a clear insight into public questions, she had a great influence in all the movements carried on by the women of the Territories, including the Council of Women, the Aberdeen Association, and the Daughters of the Empire. Before leaving for the Yukon they were presented with a handsome cabinet of silverware by their Moose Jaw friends, and the women of Regina made Mrs. Ross the recipient of a very handsome testimonial and address, publicly presented at Government House. On this occasion, Mrs. Ross, in the course of a frank and able speech, said: "I have been nineteen years in the Territories and am not going alone to the Yukon, but am taking seven little Nor'-westers with me. I can never forget the North-West is my home." On August 1st 1901, Governor Ross accompanied by his wife and family of four girls and three boys arrived in Dawson City from Skagway. It was decided that Mrs. Ross, her infant and niece Harriet should return by the next boat to Victoria, where purchases for the furnishing of the Government House would be made. They went to Juneau, Alaska and on August 14th boarded the S.S. Islander, "the crack passenger steamer of the Alaskan route operated by the C.P.R." carrying 65 to 80 passengers and crew. The Islander sank in the Lynn Canal near Douglas Island at 2 o'clock in the morning. Barbara, baby William and Harriet were all among the 42 casualties. Their bodies were recovered a few days later and buried in Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria, British Columbia. Janet Winchester (1735-1818) and William Simpson (1733-18190 are Ken's 6x and Barbara's 2x GG Grandparents. You can follow this link for their common ancestor.

Don Bolles (1928-1976) (9th Cousin, 2x Removed), was a reporter who was murdered while investigating corruption in Arizona, USA. On June 2, 1976, a bomb exploded underneath his car which mortally wounded him and he died 11 days later. A team of 38 journalists from 28 newspapers and television stations decided to continue Bolles' work in Arizona. Led by Newsday journalist Robert W. Greene they produced a 23-part series in 1977 exposing corruption, land fraud, and the influence of organized crime in the state. More on the details: On June 2, 1976, he left the newsroom to meet a source at the Hotel Clarendon in Phoenix. He walked into the hotel lobby and had been waiting for a few minutes when a call came to the desk for him. He spoke on the phone for a minute or two then left the hotel, according to the reports. He apparently started his white Datsun B210 sedan and had moved a few feet when a bomb strapped to the underside of the car detonated, blowing open the driver’s door and shattering his lower body. He died 11 days later. Bolles survived for several days before succumbing to injuries from the car explosion. Later it came out this cowardly deed was the result of Bolles digging into details of the Mafia’s influence in America, although justice was served slowly. Now, over 40 years later, controversy continues to rage over how this tragedy should be remembered. Bolles’ Datsun in its bombed-out state was on display at the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the freedom of the press, although that installation is now closed. You might think it was a nice tribute to the fallen journalist, but some of his colleagues strongly disagree. They not only think the car shouldn’t be displayed to the public again but that it should be completely destroyed. An outspoken advocate of keeping the car on display, George Weisz worked on the Bolles case as a member of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. He views displaying the car as a touching tribute to a journalist who gave his very life to expose the truth. If the Newseum won’t be putting the Datsun on display again anytime soon, Weisz plans to work on bringing it back to Arizona for the public to view there. ^[17] Faith Clarke (1618-1675) and Edward Doty (1599-1655) are Ken's 10x and Don's 8x GG Grandparents. You can follow this link to their common ancestor.

Elliot Richardson (1920-1999) (9th Cousin, 2x Removed: Maternal) is best known as being the Secretary of Defense when President Richard Nixon appointed him Attorney General of the United States, but he resigned when President Nixon directed him to fire the special prosecutor investigating Watergate scandal, Archibald Cox. Nixon then fired Richardson’s assistant, William Ruckelshaus, when he too refused to fire Cox. The event would be known as the "Saturday Night Massacre." Cox was finally removed by Solicitor General Robert Bork, though a federal district court subsequently ruled the action illegal. Richardson was the author of two books. The Creative Balance: Government, Politics, and the Individual in America's Third Century was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1976. Reflections of a Radical Moderate was published by Westview Press in 1996. Reflections expresses his outlook: I am a moderate – a radical moderate. I believe profoundly in the ultimate value of human dignity and equality. I therefore believe as well in such essential contributions to these ends as fairness, tolerance, and mutual respect. In seeking to be fair, tolerant, and respectful I need to call upon all the empathy, understanding, rationality, skepticism, balance, and objectivity I can muster. On New Year's Eve, 1999, Richardson died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 79. John Robbins (1583-1680) and Anne Pitt (1587-1620) are Ken's 10x and Elliot 8x GG Grandparents. You can follow the trail of their common ancestor.

Silas "Sile" Doty (1800-1876) (5th Cousin, 6x Removed) was the leader of a gang of counterfeiters, horse thieves, and burglars of The New England, Middle, and Western States. Doty's criminal career is known primarily through his autobiography, compiled by J. G. W. Colburn and published four years after Doty's death as The Life of Sile Doty The Most Noted Thief and Daring Burglar: The Terror of Mexico During 1849. As this title suggests, the tone of the autobiography is boastful and unapologetic. Doty excuses his crimes as stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Except where otherwise noted, what follows is taken from the autobiography and may contain exaggerations and self-serving distortions. As a child, he stole toys from his siblings, a penknife from his teacher, and a horseshoe from a blacksmith, not because he needed or wanted these things, but for the excitement and pleasure he took from evading detection. When Doty was about nine years old, his family moved west to Bangor, New York, a fur trapping region, where he began a lucrative three-year career of stealing animals from traps and selling their furs. About 1815, Doty joined a band of thieves and counterfeiters operating in the Bangor area. In a few years, Doty became the leader of this gang, whose depredations now extended throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. In the winter of 1818, Doty learned blacksmithing and used his new skills to outfit himself with a complete set of skeleton keys and burglary tools. Throughout his criminal career Doty specialized in making such tools and employing them with great stealth and skill. Doty typically employed disguises, false identities, misdirection, and other nonviolent means, but when directly challenged he would resort to brass knuckles or whatever was at hand. Doty learned to pass counterfeit money from Ed Cooper, a resident of New York City, who would wholesale such money to him for 30 cents on the dollar. Doty typically entered a town with one or more associates, who would pretend not to know Doty in order to gather intelligence about whether he had been detected—and if so, what actions were being taken to pursue him. If he had counterfeit money, Doty would go on a spending spree, all the while scouting out where stores kept their money. If a tempting prize was guarded by a watch dog, Doty would feed it poisoned meat. At night he and his associates would break into homes, places of business, and stables using skeleton keys and relocking doors after leaving. He would deposit his loot with a confederate. By the time Doty was ready to leave town, he would have scouted out a fast horse to steal, in order to make his getaway. A favorite tactic was to have an associate show up at the location of the horse to be stolen with a legitimately rented horse. Doty would steal both the horse and a sulky, wagon, or other rig, which would be attached to the legitimate horse and driven by the associate in the opposite direction from that taken by Doty and the stolen horse. Several miles out of town, the stolen rig would be abandoned and the legitimate horse returned to its owner. It never failed that when the theft was detected, the aroused citizens would pursue the tracks of the stolen rig. Each year, Doty would go on a campaign of crime through the towns and cities of New York State and New England. He was part of an extensive network of criminals with whom he cooperated and to whom he could sell his stolen goods. During the summer of 1822, Doty learned sailing by working on a boat traveling up and down the Saint Lawrence River, and in the process managed to fill a trunk with pilfered valuables. In the fall, Doty made use of his new sailing skills by stealing a pleasure boat in Kingston, Ontario, loading it with stolen property, and sailing it down the Saint Lawrence to a place near Ogdensburg, New York, where he unloaded the boat and sank it. Much more can be read. The above image is a drawing inside the book and just maybe the only image of Sile Doty in existence (on ABE books, it sells for $1,350). Faith Clarke (1618-1675) and Edward Doty (1599-1655) are Ken's 10x Grandparents and Silas's 4x Grandparents. You can follow this link for their common ancestor.

Eliphalet Remington II (1793-1861) (5th Cousin, 5x Removed: maternal line), weapons Inventor, Businessman. A trained blacksmith, at age 23 he invented and hand produced a hunting rifle that became so popular that he founded the "E. Remington and Sons" firearms manufacturing company. Later changed to "Remington Arms", the rifles they produced became iconic in the American West, and are still highly sought today. His father was born in Yorkshire, England. Hester (Unknown) Robbins (1593-1677) is Ken's 10x GG Grandmother and Eliphalet's 4x GG Grandmother. You can follow this shaft to see their common ancestor.

Some cousins who were murders . . . it does not even feel "right" to list them as notable; so, we will call them less-than-notables:

Edward Rulloff (1821-1871) (7th Cousin, 4x Removed), was an American doctor, lawyer, schoolmaster, photographer, inventor, carpet designer, phrenologist, and philologist, in addition to a career criminal and serial killer (killed three: his wife, daughter, and a clerk at a store he was robbing; thought to have killed 5: his sister-in-law and niece). This dichotomy was exemplified in the title of his 1871 biography, The Man of Two Lives. He was also known as "The Genius Killer". Rulloff's brain is said to be the second-largest brain on record, with a volume of 1673 cm3. It can be seen on display at the Wilder Brain Collection in the psychology department of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Rulloff was born near Saint John, New Brunswick, to German immigrant parents. His brother was photographer William Rulofson. Rulloff's "two lives" were both premature: by the time he was twenty years old, he had already worked in a law firm and served two years in prison for embezzlement. In 1842 he moved to Dryden in Upstate New York, where he worked as a school teacher and studied botanical medicine with Dr. Henry W. Bull. As the grand jury was unwilling to indict Rulloff for murder without a body, he was instead accused of kidnapping his wife. Rulloff conducted his own defense at his trial, in 1846, focusing on the lack of evidence that any crime had been committed. Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to ten years with hard labor in Auburn Prison. While incarcerated, Rulloff taught himself philology and formulated his own theory about language evolution, that he intended to publish under the title The Great Secret in Philology after his release. He was even allowed to teach students in his own cell. However, his hopes of starting a career in the field were dashed when he was informed that Tompkins County would charge him with the murder of his wife as soon as he was released. Rulloff claimed double jeopardy and started a legal battle from jail. The district attorney dropped the charge for Harriet Rulloff's murder, but replaced it with one for Priscilla's. Rulloff was in turn found guilty of this crime in 1858, but he escaped custody before the verdict reached him. Rulloff's trial began on January 4, 1871. It became a sensation that attracted crowds of 2,000 people daily. Some, such as the director of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, believed that a man with the evident intellectual prowess of Rulloff was too valuable to be executed and should be spared, regardless of his guilt. Rulloff himself, who led his own defense again, refused to plead insanity and requested that Governor John T. Hoffman either pardon him or delay his execution until his theory on language evolution was fully developed, claiming that he would be ready to die after that. Mark Twain wrote a letter to the Tribune in which he satirized the requests of clemency for Rulloff, stating his willingness to produce a different man that would admit to Rulloff's crime and be executed in his place. On March 3, Rulloff was found guilty and sentenced to hang. While on death row, he confessed to the murder of his wife and described it in detail, but he never admitted to having killed his daughter. This caused some speculation that he had sent her to live with relatives under a different name and had not killed her. Rulloff's execution on May 18, 1871, was the last man hung in New York state. Some sources claim he gave a speech on the gallows, ending with "Hurry it up! I want to be in hell in time for dinner." Other sources say that his only statement was "I can't stand still." His brain was taken to Cornell University after his execution, where a professor, Burt Wilder, declared Rulloff's brain to be the largest on record (at that time). John Wood (1590-1655) and Elizabeth UNKNOWN (1613-1684) are Ken's 10x and Edward's 6x GG Grandparents. You can follow their family link through their common ancestor.

63 Another Cousins:

• Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968) || Civil Rights Movement leader || a United States clergyman, activist, and leader in the civil rights movement
• Charles H. (Lackey) Weiss (1920-1974) (cabinetmaker)
• John Dewey (1859-1952) (Philosopher)
• Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) (logician, mathematician, philosopher)
• Charles Chamberlin Chitty (1870-1931) (NHLer)
• William Mailes Cowley (1912-1993) (NHLer)
• Gordon Blanchard Keates (1895-1972) (NHL Hall of Fame)
• Peter V. Seeger (1919-2014) (singer and songwriter)
• Kim Campbell (fist woman PM of Canada)
• Hiram Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885) (US President)
• Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964) (US President)
• William Howard Taft (1857-1930) (US President)
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) (US President)
• Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) (US President)
• Jimmy Carter Jr. (US President)
• George Bush (US President)
• Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) (US President)
• Thomas Stafford (Astronaut)
• Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (1923-1998) (Astronaut)
• Owen Kay Garriott (1930-2019) (Astronaut)
• Buzz Aldrin Jr. (Astronaut)
• Lee Ann Remick (1935-1991) (actress)
• Marilyn Joan (Tabor) Crawford (1932-1968) (actress)
• Humphrey DeForest Bogart (1899-1957) (Actor)
• Burton Leon Reynolds Jr (1936-2018) (Actor)
• Anthony Perkins (1932-1992) (Actor)
• Marion Robert Mitchell (Morrison) Wayne (1907-1979) (John Wayne, Actor)
• Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (1900-1967) (Actor)
• Patrick Wayne Swayze (1952-2009) (Actor)
• Christopher D'Olier Reeve (1952-2004) (Actor)
• James Maitland Stewart (1908-1997)
• Ralph Harold Waite II (1928-2014) (best known as John Walton, Actor)
• Nathaniel Ford Moore (1884-1910) (Olympic Gold Medalist)
• Margaret Ives (Abbott) Dunne (1876-1955) (Olympic Gold Medalist)
• Walter Beardsley Tewksbury (1876-1968) (Olympic Gold Medalist)
• Harold Marion Osborn (1899-1975) (Olympic Gold Medalist)
• Benjamin McLane Spock (1903-1998) (Olympic Gold Medalist)
• Ronald Wayne Van Zant (1948-1977) (Lead vocalist of Lynyrd Skynyrd)
• Ronald James (Padavona) Dio (1942-2010) (heavy metal vocalist for Black Sabbath, Elf, Rainbow)
• Harold Forster Chapin (1942-1981) (Singer, Cats in the Cradle)
• Alice Cary (1820-1871) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Maria (Weston) Chapman (1806-1885) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Julia (Ward) Howe (1819-1910) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe (1811-1896) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Anna Gardner (1816-1901) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Stephen Symonds Foster (1809-1881) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Eva Lucinda (Emery) Dye (1855-1947) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• John Griffith (Chaney) London (1876-1916) (US Civil Rights Activist)
• Billy Bishop (1894-1956) (WWI flying ace)
• William Child (1832 - 1920) (beekeeper with an autobiography)
• Len Dodge (1854-1891) (buffalo hunter in the USA)
• Walter Steeves (1889-1925) (born in NB, worked at the border crossing in Idaho, and believed to be murdered on his way to Spokane)
• Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) (was a transcendentalist philosopher, abolitionist, and teacher. He was full of dreams and schemes, an idealist who founded a commune called Fruitlands and became a vegan before the term even existed. Fruitlands failed miserably, and Alcott got by on loans from others, including his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, but the Alcotts were often without money. Bronson Alcott died on March 4, 1888; a few days earlier, bedridden, he had told his visiting daughter Louisa, "I am going up. Come with me." She replied, "I wish I could." As it turned out, she followed him just two days later, dying of a stroke at age 55.)
• Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) (an abolitionist, a feminist, and an author, most notably of the novel Little_Women,)
• Rev. William Archibald (1870-1966) (born PEI, noted as important people of Nova Scotia, and in retirement got in his car with his wife and drove west visiting friends and former students)
• Henry Montgomery (1868-1922) (VP, then President of the New York Rubber Company, who committed suicide in 1922 by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge likely as a result of the family's loss of their fortune due to the stock market crash at the beginning of the Great Depression)...His son Henry Montgomery Jr. (1904-1981) would become an actor and director who married a Broadway actress Elizabeth Montgomery (1904-1992), while their daughter Elizabeth (Montgomery) Foxworth (1933-1995) was an actress who played Samantha on the television show Bewitched! that ran from 1964 to 1972. She was married four times. William Asher was her husband during the TV show. Montgomery was married to the series producer, Bill Asher. Asher was responsible for producing President John F. Kennedy’s infamous birthday party when Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” The couple was also friends with Kennedy. Bewitched was actually renewed for Seasons 9 and 10, but [she] wanted out. It was at this same time that Montgomery’s marriage to Asher began to unravel. The sitcom came to an end in 1972 and the couple divorced a year after. Elizabeth Montgomery didn’t get along with Dick York, who played her husband Darrin Stephens,” he shared. “He was in love with her but she was married to the show’s producer and it became very uncomfortable for her. He was addicted to painkillers and kept missing episodes until finally, they had to replace him with Dick Sargent. The final season she is bra-less and did not want to be there.)
• Evelyn McHale (1923-1947) (an American bookkeeper who took her own life by jumping from the 86th floor Observation Deck of the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947. A photograph taken four minutes after her death by photography student Robert C Wiles has become an iconic suicide photograph, referred to as "the most beautiful suicide" as her body rests atop a crumpled limousine. After this, he never published another photograph. LIFE Magazine ran it, full page, with the caption “At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car.” Later, Andy Warhol appropriated the image and manipulated it into his famous work, Suicide (Fallen Body). Hours later Detective Frank Murray discovered the note written by Evelyn shortly after she arrived in Manhattan that morning. It read, “I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family — don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”)
• William Partridge (1830-1916) (Latter Day Saint pioneer who had 23 siblings and 18 children, one Emma whose husband's father was involved in a battle with the native Americans during the time of the Pony Express and the Civil War.)
• Cephas Carey (captain in the state militia, Justice of the Peace, first wife killed during a battle with native Americans then married a woman whose husband was also killed by native Americans, who would later build a stockade for protection)
• Beman Dawes (an arborist who planted over 50,000 trees with a goal to plant trees from all over the world that would survive in central Ohio. Today, over 5,000 different types in over 1,800 acres called The Dawes Arboretum. He was also a leader in the gas and petroleum industry in Ohio. He was the founding president of The Ohio Cities Gas Company in 1914. This company later became the Pure Oil Company. The profits helped establish the arboretum. )
• Julia Child (Julia Child was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963. She was also a spy in World War II.)
• W.B. Hayes (fox farmer, blacksmith)
• William Hayes (carriage and sleigh builder, PostMaster for 37 years)

Degrees of Separation

Just some of the famous people Ken is "connected" to as distant "cousins" (the * indicates just one step away from "real" cousins):

Connected "Cousin"	Title	Blurb	Line of Descent	Degrees
Dr. Suess (1904-1991)	Author	Children's books, poetry	Paternal, Benjamin Allen (1702-1754)'s brother	19
John James Audubon ( 1785-1851)	Artist	birds and their natural habitats	Paternal, (4thCousin, 6x Removed, Eliza Seaman's husband	20
Louis Riel (1844-1885)	*Métis leader	Founder of Manitoba, Central figure in Red River & North-West resistances	Maternal, , Marguerite Holleri (Howatt) of Tryon (1739- aft 1815) one step away from real cousins	18
	Paternal, Richardson Trenholm (1829-1902)'s sister's husband	23
Tommy Douglas (1904-1986)	Father of Medicare	Baptist minister, co-founded CCF, 7th Premier of Saskatchewan, first leader of the NDP	Paternal, Stephen Seaman's brother's child	31
Angus Waters (1881-1968)	Bluenose Captain	skippered Bluenose from 1921 – 1938, with five international sailing races, and was undefeated for seventeen years	Paternal, Dorothy Patton's sister's husband	17
Milton Acorn (1923-1986)	Poet, The People's Poet 0f Canada	Governor General Award Winner for Poetry, gave up carpentry to work as a full-time poet	Paternal, Benjamin Allen (1733-1823)'s wife's brother	18
Robert Trenholm Oulton (1923-1986)	Fox Farmer	co-founder of the silver fox industry in Prince Edward Island, hunted with Charles Dalton of Tignish	Paternal, Richardson Trenholm (1829-1903)'s brother's wife	9
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)	Author	Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre	Paternal, Benjamin Allen (1702-1754)'s brother's wife	19
Al Purdy (1918-2000)	Poet	39 books of poetry, Order of Canada, two Governor General's Awards, the famous A-frame cottage in Ameliasburgh, ON	Paternal, Elizabeth Allen (1818-1891) brother. Note: Purdy’s GGGM Elizabeth (Snelgrove) Ireland (1810-1894) was born in Charlottetown, married her husband (Richard Ireland) in Ch'town 16 Oct 1828	23
King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547)	King of England	He killed his 8 wives	Paternal, John Allen (1879-1944)'s brother.	20
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)	King of Rock & Roll	What can we say	Paternal, Charlottete Thompson (1788-1879)'s sister	21
Laura Secord (1775-1868)	More than just chocolate	A young Canadian woman during the War of 1812, Secord overheard American officers planning their next attack while sitting in her father’s pub. Walking 23 kilometers to the nearest British base, she successfully managed to warn the army in time, and the Americans were defeated. Today, she is perhaps best known for a chocolate company named in her honour.	Paternal, George Allen (1782-1837)'s brother	15
Agnes MacPhail (1890-1954)	First woman ever elected to the Canadian House of Commons	McPhail was an Ottawa schoolteacher who made history in 1921 by becoming the first woman ever elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Fairly radical in her politics, she switched parties several times during her five terms before finally joining the socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.	Paternal, [Dobson (1769-1855)]'s sister	21
The Famous Five	Five female politicians and activits	from Alberta who fought for women's rights in various ways. From 1927-1929 they were involved in a high-profile legal challenge known as the Persons Case that argued women should be eligible to be appointed to the Canadian Senate. Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931) (16) Emily Murphy (1868-1933) (21) Irene Parlby (1868-1965) (23) Nellie McClung (1873-1951) (25) Louise McKinney (1868-1931) (29)	Paternal,	16
Viola Desmond (1914-1965)	First Canadian woman to appear on a bank note	Desmond was a businesswoman and part of Nova Scotia's small black community. In 1946 she attempted to sit in a part of a movie theatre that was reserved for white customers and was arrested. Though unsuccessful in fighting the trumped-up charges in court, she nevertheless became an important symbol of the struggle for civil rights among Canadian minorities and kicked-started the Civil Rights movement in Canada	Paternal, Louisa Trenholm (1820-1904)'s brother	18
Jack Layton (1950-2011)	*Leader of Official Opposition for three months, Leader of NDP 2003-2011	He led his party to gain a historic rise in seats (from 37 seats to 103) during the 2011 federal election. Following Layton's death, his family released an open letter, written by Layton two days before his death. In the letter, he expressed his wishes regarding the NDP's leadership in the event of his death, and addressed various segments of the Canadian population. He ended the letter with: "My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world.".	Paternal, Ken's 2nd Cousin (4x Removed) Lewis Steeves (1812-1893)'s brother Christian Steeves was Jack's 3x GGP,	15
Carrie Fisher (1956-2016)	Princes Leia	Carrie was open about her diagnosis with bipolar disorder, and fought depression and substance abuse. She also regretted the slave scene in Return of the Jedi.	Paternal, Samuel Allen (1660-1750)'s sister	23
Mark Hammill (1959- current)	Luke Skywalker	Link is to Mark's grandfather; degrees is to Mark. Hamill is a lifelong fan of Laurel and Hardy and of David Letterman taping every episode and keeping a journal documenting the show.	Paternal, Samuel Allen (1660-1750)'s brother	23
Walt Disney (1901-1966)	*Created childhood on screen	Walt and his staff created numerous famous fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. He was the original voice for Mickey. During his lifetime, he won 22 Academy Awards and received four honorary Academy Awards from a total of 59 nominations, including a record of four in one year.	Paternal, Ken's 1st Cousin (6x Removed) Nathaniel Clark (1730-1802) 's grandfather is Walt's 5th GGP	17
Wayne Gretzky (1961 - current)	The Great One	The profile link is to his father; the degree of separation is to Wayne. Ken met Walter once and Walter sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" for the children at the daycare. Ken wore, and took a photo of, Walter's Stanley Cup ring.	Paternal, Stephen Seaman (1762-1820)'s brother	26
Nicolas (1716-1798) & Anne Galais (1729-1779)	*PEI couple deported	A Acadien couple deported from PEI in 1759 from Isle Saint Jean, with descendants in France, Newfoundland and Miquelon	Maternal, Barbara Howatt (1786-1860) of Tryon's sister ~ closer to a true cousin with Barbara (Howatt) Cole (1786-1860) of Tryon	16

To add these in the same format at a later time:

Outlaws:

Jesse James 19

Butch Cassidy 21

Belle Star (American Outlaw) 22

Ma Barker (mother of Barker-Karpis gang) 22

Billy the Kid 29

Witch Trials

George Burroughs (6x GG Grand-Aunt's husband's sister is George) 13

Canadian Poets/Writers

G.D. Roberts 14

Alexander Muir 17

Archibald Lampman 16

Emile Nelligan 19

Tom McInnes 19

Cornelius Flumberfelt 19

Pierre Berton 19

Wallace Robb 20

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau 21

E.J. Pratt 22

Farley Mowatt 22

John McCrae 23

Pauline Johnson 23

Joseph Stanford 24

Isabella Crawford 27

Leonard Cohen 28

Charles Mair 29

[not on Big Tree] Earle Birney Susan Harrison

Poets/Writers

Walt Whitman - close 17

Ezra Pound 18

William Shakespeare 18

Charles Dickens 19

Lawrence Ferlinghetti 20

Jack Kerouac 20

Rudyard Kipling 20

John Donne 20

Alfred Lord Tennyson 21

Langston Hughes (Poet) 21

William Burroughs 21

Neal Cassady 21

George Bernard Shaw 21

C. S. Lewis 22

John Keats 23

William Yeats 24

Oscar Wilde 25

Emily Bronte 26

Leo Tolstoy 27

Stephen Hawking 27

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 27

Sylvia Plath 29

William Blake 29

Maya Angelou (Poet, Writer) 31

[not on Big Tree yet] Khalil Gibran Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) Mary Oliver (1935-2019) Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) Rilke (1870s-1960s)

Rumi, Anne Sexton [not on wikitree]

Painters:Canadian

Maud Lewis 18

Francois Mallepart 18

Laura Lyall 23

Emily Carr 23

Sarah Crease 24

Group of Seven (male) The Group of Seven, as we now know them, formed in 1920, and was comprised of seven members: Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley. After Johnston left the Group in 1920 to move to Winnipeg, A.J. Casson was eventually invited to join in 1926. Edwin Holgate became a member in 1930, while LeMoine FitzGerald joined in 1932.

Lawren Harris 17

A.Y. Jackson 19

Alfred Casson 19

James MacDonald (founder) 25

Fred Varley (founder) 29

Franklin Carmichael (founded) 37

Arthur Lismer [not connected to Big Tree]

Painters: International

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) 19

Claude Monet (1840-1926) 20

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) 21

James Whistler (1834-1903) 21

Peter Rubens (1577-1640) 22

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) 23

Hentri Matisse (1869-1954) 24

Joseph Turner (1775-1851) 26

Piero Della Francesca (1416-1492) 28

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) 27

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) 28

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) 30

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) 31

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) 31

Fridea Kahlo (1907-1954) 35

Pieter Mondriaan (1872 -1944)40

[not on the Big Tree] da Vinci (1452-1519) Kandinsky (1866-1944) Francisco Goya (1746-1828) Michelangelo (1475-1564) Marcus Rothko (1903-1970) Raphael (1483-1520) Any Warhola (1928-1987) JOAN MIRÓ (1893-1983)

Therapy

Sigmund Freud 22

Philosophers

William James 16

John Locke - close 18

David Hume 19

Francis Bacon 19

William Goodwin 20

Henry Sidgwick 21

Isaac Newton 22

Karl Marx 26

Jeremy Bentham 26

Thomas Hobbes 26

John Mill 26

Alfred Whitehead 27

Jean-Paul Sartre 27

Ludwig Wittgenstein 28

Derek Parfit 28

Soren Kierkegaard 29

Edmund Burke 29

Wilhelm Hegel 30

Friedrich Schlegel 31

Rene Descartes 37

Albert Camus 44

Fredrich Nietzsche 45

Voices

Clarence Nash (Donald Duck) 21

Efreme Zimbalist (Batman's Butler, Alfred Pennyworth) [https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Connection&action=connect&person1Name=Trenholm-741&person2Name=Zimbalist-2&relation=0&ignoreIds= 22}

Sterling Holloway (voice of Winnie-the-Pooh, the stork in "Dumbo", and Kaa the python in "The Jungle Book") 22

Thurl Ravenscroft (Tony the Tiger) 23

Charles Butler (Loopy De Loop, Wally Gator, Yogi Bear, Hokey Wolf, Elroy Jetson, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey, Peter Potamus, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, and Scooby-Dum.) 23

[not on the Big Tree] Wayne Allwine (1947-2009) (voice of Mickey Mouse 32 years) Adriana Caselotti (1916-1997) (voice of Snow White, in first Walt Disney animated feature, in 1994, she was named a Disney Legend, making her the first female voice actor so named.)

Performers/Actors/Screen Writers/TV Reporters

Walter Cronkite 18

Alex Trebek 18

Edward Murrow 19

Roy Rogers 19

Patsy Cline 19

Madonna 21

Hank Williams Sr 21

Johnny Cash 21

Merle Haggard 21

Farrah Fawcett 22

Dolly Pardon 22

John Lennon 22

Gene Autry 22

Kenny Rogers 22

Sammy Davies Jr. 22

Waylon Jennings 22

Peter Jennings 22

Minnie Pearl 23

Groucho Marx 24

Conway Twitty - mom 24

George Jones 25

James Brown 32

Alfred Hitchcock 36

Chuck Berry 39

Mother of Oprah [not connected to Big Tree] Lindsay Wagner, Lee Majors

Magicians

Perley Palmer 17

Irving Fiske 20

Albert Smith 22

Paul Daniels 23

Arthur Babbs 26

Cedric Dahl 27M

David Verner 27

James Zwinge 28

Harry Houdini 33

Inventors

Samuel Colt (handgun) 16

Alexander Bell (Telephone) 17

Wilber Wright (airplane) 17

Daniel Wesson 17

Guglielmo Marconi (Telephone) 19

Arthur Guinness (Guinness Brewery) 19

Armand Bombardier (invented the snowmobile following the death of his son, after a blizzard had prevented access to the hospital) 19

Willard Boyle (born in Amherst, NS, awarded the Nobel prize in Physics in 2009 "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor") 21

H. V. Dalling (born in NB, he was a watchmaker and jeweler. He owned a shop in Woodstock. He was clever and contrived a telephone exchange that ran from his store to his house) 21

Eugene Stoner 23

Alan Turing (designed a machine to help break the German Enigma encrypted messages in World War 2) 24

Steve Jobs (Apple) 27

Sir Alec Fleming (penicillin) 27

John Baird (TV) 29

Lou Ottens, Inventor of the Cassette Tape, Dies at 94 (2001)

Star Wars

Alec Guinness (Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi) 19

Adam Driver (Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, connected through his paternal grandmother)22

Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) 24

Kenny Baker (R2D2) 25

David Prowse (Darth Vader body in Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back) [32]

James Earl Jones (still living..Voice of Vader) [not on Big Tree]

Sebastian Shaw (English poet, actor, director, playwright, and novelist. He was the face of an unmasked Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars Episode VII: Return of the Jedi) 28

Canadian Historical

Perry Doolittle 19

Pierre Trudeau 21

Norman Bethune 23

Jacques-Yves Cousteau 24

Kings & Queens & Other Royalty

Meghan Markle 22

Calpurnius (St. Patrick, 387 AD - 461 AD) [https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Connection&action=connect&person1Name=Trenholm-741&person2Name=Ap_Calpurnius-1&relation=0&ignoreIds= 48)

Nature

Dian Fossey (Gorillas) 20

Steve Irwin (Crocodile Hunter) 21

Antoon van Hoof (Netherlands: changed zoo to a park) 32

Peter Scott (founder of WWF for Nature) 22

International

Florence Nightingale 18

Charles Lindbergh 21

Andrew Carnegie (90% of wealth to charity) 21

Mata Hari 27

Ann Frank 33

[not on Big Tree] Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), Holocaust Survivor and author, "Man's Search for Meaning". Harvey Milk (1930-1978)

African-American History

Spingarn Medal and which winners are "connected" to the "big tree":

CANADA:

Pearleen Oliver (NS) relation: George Clyke of Truro 27

USA:

Muhammad Ali 20

Marian Anderson 9opera singer and civil rights activist) 21

Alexander Haley (Writer) 22

Mary Terrell (first teacher college) 22

Jackie Robinson 23

Benjamin Mays (civil rights leader, 1982 award) 23

James Healy 24

William Braithwaite (writer) 25

Rosa Parks 26

Athea Gibson (athlete) 27

Arthur Ashe (tennis) 29

Thurgood Marshall (Supreme Court Judge) 32

Duke Ellington 33

[not connected to the Big Tree yet] Barbara Johns, in 1951, as a 16-year-old, led a school strike against segregation. Malcolm X

Bass Reeves, the real Lone Ranger. [no connection yet]

PEI

Nancy Guptill 19

William Pope 19

RMS Titantic Passengers

John Astor (billionaire) (died) 18

Elisabeth Allen 23

E J Smith (captain) 25

RMS Titantic Orchestra

William Brailey 25

Wallace Hartley [not on Big Tree] his violin was recovered and sent to his fiancée, Maria Robinson. It was later sold at auction for 1.5 million dollars.

few orchestra members have any bio or family geneology

Peace

Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce (truth teller) [not on Big Tree]

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945-) (future State Councillor of Myanmar) (link is through her grandfather) 20 Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese opposition political leader and chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD). In 1988, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally, calling for democracy and reform after General Ne Win stepped down. When the military Junta took control, she continued to fight for human rights and equality. She would have been the new Burmese leader in 1990, if the military junta had not detained her under house arrest before the general election and later nullified the electoral results. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.” After passing almost 15 years under house arrest from 1989 to her recent release in 2010, this brave woman was elected to the lower house of the Burmese parliament in 2012, announcing her intention to run for the presidency in Myanmar’s 2015 elections one year after. Although Parliament voted against most constitutional amendments in June 2015, meaning that Aung San Suu Kyi could become president in the election, the party which she led, the National League for Democracy, won an absolute majority in both houses of the Assembly in November 2015, paving the way to democracy after decades of military rule in the country. Aung San Suu Kyi’s core beliefs are rooted in nonviolence and the rule of law, under the influence of both Mahatma Gandhi and more specifically Buddhist precepts. Burma’s Iron Butterfly said: “Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not ‘given’, it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.”

Susan B Anthony (1820-1906) 12 Susan Brownell Anthony was an American abolitionist, educational reformer, labor activist, temperance suffragist and woman’s rights campaigner. She notably played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement in the US, and her famous quote “Failure is impossible” encouraged thousands and thousands of women to continue to fight. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, Anthony collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. After an early life in teaching, she partnered with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who would later be her lifelong friend and co-worker, and founded several famous social associations, including the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1872, Anthony was arrested for illegal voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and convicted in a widely-publicized trial. During the trial, she spoke in all 29 towns and villages of New York, asking, “Is it a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?” proclaiming her right by the Fourteenth Amendment, “We no longer petition legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected ‘citizen's right.” When she was sentenced to pay a fine of $100, she refused, saying: “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty,” and indeed she never did. Before her retirement, when asked whether women would be given the right to vote in her lifetime, Anthony replied: “It will come, but I shall not see it...It is inevitable. We can no more deny forever the right of self-government to one-half our people…but come it will, and I believe within a generation.” Fourteen years after her death, on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed, giving all women the right to vote.

[not on the Big Tree] Nelson Mendela (1918-2013) Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) U Thant (1909-1974) (was a Burmese diplomat and the third United Nations Secretary-General. U Thant played a crucial role in diffusing the Cuban Missile Crisis and was widely respected for his calmness, detachment, and commitment to conflict resolution in his role as UN Secretary-General.) [not on WikiTree] Malala Yousafzai (1997 – ) Pakistani schoolgirl who overcame assassination attempt by Taliban to campaign for universal access to education. The youngest person to be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. 14th Dalai Lama (1935 – ) The spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama has sought to protect the interests of the Tibetans while promoting a non-violent approach to the Chinese. He teaches the importance of compassion for promoting happiness and inner peace.

Northwest Passage Explorers

John Irving (Lieutenant of HMS Terror) 17

Bedford Pim 17

Benjamin Smith 18

Alexander MacKenzie 19

Robert Aldrch (HMS Resolute) 20

John Franklin (Captain of HMS Erebus) 21

William Parry 21

Arthur Dobbs 21

Henry Feilden 21

John Rae 21

Frank Worsley 22

William Kennedy 23

Murdoch McLennan 23

James Fitzjames (Commander of HMS Erebus) 24

Graham Gore (Lieutenant of HMS Erebus) 25

Felix Booth 26

John Peddie 27

Francis Crozier (Captain HMS Terror) 30

Roald Amundsen 33

Explorers

John Wesley Powell 20

Marco Polo [not on big Tree]

Sentenced to Death

New Brunswick NB

Marie Josephe Corriveau (hung,1763 , public displayed, Quebec, after her husband ill-treatment of her) 16

Harry Williams/Darious Thornton (hung, 1925, New Brunswick) 17

George Gee (hung,1904, murder of cousin and lover, Woodstock, NB ) 18

Marie-Madeleine Gibbaut (hung,1697, Quebec, abandoned newborn infant) 18

John Young (hung, 1876, Ontario, clubbed a kind farmer to death) 18

Benny Swin (hung twice, 1922, Woodstock, double murder of cousin and former girlfriend) 20

Thomas Cammack (hung, 1904, New Brunswick) 22

Gordon Northcott (hung, 1930, born in Sask, crimes in USA, a boy child abductor and murderer) 25

Canadian Athletes

Jean Beliveau 20

Gordie Howe 21

Syl Apps 21

Sid Abel 23

Auschwitz & Related

Klaus Bonheoffer (He was a German jurist and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime who was executed after the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler.) 31

Witold Pilecki (Polish soldier who volunteered to be caught and sent to Auschwitz, becoming prisoner 4859) 37

War

James Wolfe 21

Louis Joseph de Montcalm 29

Suffrage Movement

Elizabeth Stanton 16

Kate Lovell-Smith 22

Business

Timothy Eaton 21

Law & Order

John Wilkes Booth 20

Lee Harvey Oswald 23

Leon Czolgosz 28

[not on Big Tree] Elliot Ness William Mark Felt (1913-2008) (Deep Throat)

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Ken Trenholm .