Joan Prout

Ancestors

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Biography

Joan was born in January 1951 in New York City. She is the first of 3 daughters born to Lewis Austin Prout and Augusta Dallaire. Although the family was one first tenants of the huge apartment complex called Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan, they gave up rent-control status as soon as the pediatrician said it was safe to relocate. They moved to Rhode Island where Lewis (kown as Aus) took a job as a payroll auditor for the Providence Washington Insurance company and Augusta gave up her war-time career to be a homemaker who did not return to work until after Joan and her 2 younger sisters were in school full time.

Joan attended public schools from K-12 in Barrington,Rhode Island, graduating in 1969.

She graduated from Wellesley College in 1973 with a BA in Sociology. She is an honorary member of the class of 1972 of Bowdoin College which she attended as an exchange student during the first year that Bowdoin accepted women as full-time students.

She enrolled in the graduate school of Bryant University in Smithfield RI.

Joan moved to the Washington DC area in 1974 to work in the Publications Department of the Federal Reserve Board. She continued graduate studies at George Washington University, and took art classes at Catholic University and American University.

After moving back to RI in 1978, she worked as the Editorial Director for a small Cash Management education company while finishing her MBA studies at Bryant,one of only 2 female MBA recipients in the Class of 1979.

She was hired by AT&T after graduation to a national account executive position located in New Haven CT.

She was transferred to company headquarters in NJ the next year, for what was supposed to be a 3-year assignment. It turned into home in NJ for over 30 years. In 1987 Joan accepted an early retirement offer following the Bell System break-up.

In Sept. 1987 she moved to Stockholm Sweden to work as an international telecommunications consultant while attending the International Graduate School for English Speaking students.

While there, she met Hans Oscarsson. In Dec 1988 they returned to NJ to deal with problems with the tenant who had been renting Joan's house. Joan and Hans married in May of 1989, and just celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2019.

Because the Economic Recession that began in 1987 limited employment opportunities in their specialty of international business, Joan began what would be a surprisingly satisfying 25-year career as a residential REALTOR. that lasted until the next Wall Street crash in Sept 2008. After suffering a massive stroke in 2009. Joan and Hans decided to retire rather than wait for the NJ real estate market to recover. They left NJ for good in Aug 2011 to explore different locations to settle where the winters are warmer and the cost of living lower than NJ. They spent a decade traveling as pet and house sitters, mostly east of the Mississippi.

Joan and her sister Wenda traveled to RI in June 2016 on family business. They made a Father's Day visit to the cemetery in Portland, CT where their parents are buried. The genealogy bug bit both Joan and Wenda that day. It has unquestionably become the Ground zero of our research. Located across the street from the home their father was born at, they have found that this active cemetery with fewer than 3000 graves is the final resting place of 7 generations of their ancestors. Less than a mile away, the home built by one of their Mayflower descendant ancestors is still occupied today. Although the current owner is not a relative, she has lived there for over 40 years and taken great interest in the home's history.

. .Covid changed EVERYTHING. In March 2020, within 4 days of the travel lockdown going into effect, all bookings canceled. 3 years later,they are still in Kingsport, where they bought a condo in August 2020. They did a couple of sits in 2021, and Joan continues to pet-sit occasionally, within a couple hours' drive from home. This leaves her free to concentrate on history and genealogical studies. It was a shock to see that while neither parent had many siblings, her mother's parents had about a dozen each. It explained the piles of beautiful Christmas cards delivered each December from cousins Joan didn't know. Many lived in Eastern Canada. It turns out her maternal ancestors sailed across the Atlantic from France to New France at about the same time her paternal ancestors sailed from England to New England.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Joan Prout at registration and later expanded with more information