This Hits a Little Close to Home...

 


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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Halloween Edition: Catherine Eddowes

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Trigger Warning: Descriptions of violence and murder. I have avoided explicit details, but there are still some disturbing details.        Welcome to the final installment in the Halloween edition of 52 in 52. The tale of "Jack the Ripper" is a well known story and the focus of countless horror movies, including From Hell , The Lodger , and even a recent animated Batman film, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight . The story is one of the classic horror tales, but the story of the victims is somewhat less known to horror and true crime aficionados. Today, I would like to not probe the mystery of the identity of Jack, but rather tell the tale of one of the victims, Catherine Eddowes. Catherine's story is one of desperate poverty and grief, and the stark horror of her death still resonates with us today. Her story is a good example of what genealogy can do; it paints a picture of a woman whose life and death reflects the socio-economic situation she found herself in, and how...
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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Halloween Edition: The Tyler Women

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 Welcome back to the 52 in 52! Continuing the theme for the month, I am borrowing an ancestor from a client's tree (with his express permission!), the same client I borrowed Mercy Lena Brown from. This week, we're going back to the witch hysteria of the 1690's with the tale of another family swept up in the horror, the Tylers. Eleven women and girls of the Tyler family were accused of witchcraft, encompassing three generations of women, and ending in the hanging of one of them. What is equally horrifying is that the accusations against nine of the Tyler women were made by another member of their family.      The Tyler family was, to put it mildly, huge. Job Tyler and his wife Mary, had had seven children: Moses, b. 16 Feb 1641,  m. 1.Prudence Bates, 2. Sarah (Hasey) Sprague, widow of Phineas Sprague Mary, b. abt. 1644, m. 1. Richard Post, 2. John Bridges Hopestill Tyler, b. abt 1646, m. Mary Lovett (Hopestill may have had a twin who died at birth) Hannah, b. abt...
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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Halloween Edition- Mercy Lena Brown

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    Note: I published this post, 11 Oct 2022, not realizing that today is the 175th birthday of Mary Eliza (Arnold) Brown, the mother of Mercy Lena Brown.   Welcome to another installment of the 52 in 52- Halloween edition! In this post I had to borrow another spooky ancestor, and I will have do the same for the next two installments (my own ancestors were mostly nice, solid, immigrant farmers whose lives were nice, solid, and not particularly spooky!). I figure the person in this week's post was someone's  relative, so she counts! In today's tale, we're going to meet Mercy Brown of Rhode Island, an unassuming and, by all accounts, quiet girl, whose death fed into superstition so deep that it gripped parts of New England in fear. So buckle up, and let's go! (As I was writing this post, I discovered that Lena Brown is a distant relative of one of my clients, through her mother's family! Another ancestor of his will be next week's post! So she is in a client...
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