-
Happy Birthday, Dad!
This blog has been about my patrilineal ancestry, but I haven’t written much about my grandfather or father. Perhaps because I know them firsthand, and all the other people I’ve written about have been almost like fictional characters I’ve had to develop a world and backstory for. I don’t know if I’ve done good research…
-
More on Thuddie and Teenie: Insights from my Father
Official data is the life-blood of genealogy, and while a careful researcher can infer a lot about family dynamics from documentation, it can only get you so far. Genealogists are right not to place stock in anecdotal evidence, but data is sometimes a skeleton that lacks the flesh only family stories can supply. Perhaps official…
-
Thuddie and Teenie in the New World
Boston My Virginian ancestry is a fact over which I harbor little obsession, likely because my formative years were spent in New England. I attended grade school in communities like Chelmsford, Massachusetts and Nashua, New Hampshire, the Granite State. I ate ice cream as New Englanders are fond of doing: standing outside, in winter. Most…
-
The Backstory
Every good story has an origin myth, a meta-story that leads up to the major plot and fills in important details about the main characters and their circumstances. Since a backstory helps develop a fully realized fictional story world, surely it must be so for factual tales. So… Charles “Big Honey” Robb Cromar Sr. and…