Category: Adam
My father was an Adam. His father descended from Germans who settled in Ohio. His mother was Scotch-Irish with a touch of English and French Huguenot. Through her line I am related to many US presidents and have a direct ancestry to European nobility, including Charlemagne.
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HOWELL NEWCOMB (1825-1889)
My second great grandfatherHowell Newcomb was born on October 6, 1825, in Adams, Ohio, to Jane Dubois, age 37, and Joseph Newcomb, age 40. He was the youngest of eight children. Howell is a peculiar name but there appears to be a reason. Jane Dubois’s sister, Leah, married Charles Howell. Their son Sheppard Howell was born on 8 Oct 1822 in Fairton, New Jersey. The sisters must have corresponded. Jane named her son born on 17 January 1822 as Sheppard. Leah probably did the same months later. Jane probably then named…
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JOSEPH NEWCOMB (1785-1867)
My third great grandfather Joseph Newcomb was born on 11 September 1785, in Fairton, New Jersey. At his birth, Joseph’s father, Joseph Newcomb, was 26 and his mother, Phebe Sheppard, was 23. Joseph had only one sibling. Mary died at 10 years old. Joseph was born four years after the Revolutionary War ended. At the time of Joseph’s birth, Richard Henry Lee was completing his term as President of the Continental Congress. He was followed two months later by John Hancock. Fairton Joseph’s great grandfather, Joseph Newcomb, moved from Edgartown in…
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MY COUSIN WOLFGANG OF HERXHEIM
Can ‘home’ be a place where you’ve never lived? And a place you only learned about late in life? I discovered Herxheim only 20 years ago but when Padma and I travelled there in mid-June it felt like going home. Herxheim is the ancestral home of my father’s father’s family. My great-grandfather, Jacob Adam, was born in Herxheim in 1864 but immigrated to Cincinnati in 1880. He left behind a long string of Adam ancestors stretching back at least to my eight great grandfather Johann Georg Michael Adam who was born…
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THE GRANDFATHER I NEVER KNEW
Unbeknownst to me until a few weeks ago I had a rather famous step grandfather. And it seems that the world forgot about him … so I feel compelled to tell his story. Frederick Ferdinand Moore jumped on a cattle ship in Boston Harbor in the 1890s when he was 15. He became an adventurer, weaver, sailor, soldier, novelist, pulp fiction writer, intelligence officer, war correspondent and murdered marshal. I didn’t know any of that. Perhaps my stepmother told me about her famous father but I don’t recall it. My dad…
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RESEMBLANCE AFTER 36 GENERATIONS?
Joseph, Padma and I travelled with our German friend, Volker, to pay our respects to our ancestor in Aachen, Germany. Charlemagne – or Charles I, the Emperor of the Romans, the King of the Lombards and the King of the Franks – was laid to rest in 814 in his imperial capital city of Aix-la-Chapell, now known as Aachen. Joseph is the 36th great grandson of Charles. It’s true. I can actually chart our ancestry to Charles via my grandmother. Charlemagne loved the spas of Aachen and spent his winters there.…
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THE ADAM REUNION. FIVE METRES OF FAMILY TREE.
Wolfgang Adam pulled out a long tube of paper and began to roll it out over three tables. He rolled and rolled and rolled until he uncovered a maze of photos, boxes, names and lines. I walked over and tried to comprehend what he had unveiled. ‘Here you are,’ he said. Wolfgang is the fifth cousin I met last year after cold calling anyone I could find with a last name of Adam in my ancestral homeland of Herxheim. Wolfgang walked with me down to the first metre of the tree.…
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MY COUSIN MARY AT THE D’ORSAY
I will be honest. I had never heard of the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt until I discovered we were cousins. Turns out Mary and I descend from Louis DuBois, a French Huguenot who fled persecution in his home country. Louis arrived in present day upper state New York in 1661 and established a community of like-minded individuals. Mary and I are connect via his son, Jacob DuBois, so that makes us fifth cousins, 3x removed. Padma and I were in Paris to move Joseph out of his sixth floor flat. We…
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PAYING RESPECTS TO OUR COUSIN
General George S. Patton Jr commanded the 3rd Army of the United States as they victoriously entered Nazi Germany during World War II. He remained in post-war Germany but was killed in an auto accident while going out pheasant hunting near Heidelberg just months after the war ended. He wanted to be buried with his men so he was laid to rest with 5,000 other American soldiers at the Luxembourg American Cemetery near Luxembourg City. Old Blood and Guts is my eight cousin, once removed. We both descend from a Huguenot…
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INTO THE LAND OF MY GERMAN ANCESTORS
I had visited Germany on numerous occasions prior to living here. And every time I visited I felt an odd sense of belonging. As long as I didn’t open my mouth to speak, I even felt German. I felt comfortable and at home. And in a way, I was indeed home. Half of me is German. My father is half German and my mother is half German. For 15 years, I have been trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that constitutes how I came to be. While researching my father’s…
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