Lives and Letters

These pages distill some forty years of personal research on eight family lines. These family lines originated in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the West Indies. Arriving in America between 1630 and 1848, the families originally settled in New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, and points west. This narrative is enlivened and made more compelling by the inclusion of twenty-two personal letters and communications spanning nearly four hundred years. The letters include communications sent from: Groton Hall, England about 1603 Colonial Massachusetts in 1649 Germany in 1791 Guadeloupe, West Indies in 1798 and 1830 rural Missouri in 1848-49 New Orleans in 1863-64 a Civil War camp during the siege of Atlanta Alaska during the 1898 gold rush China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 Berlin in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.