It was a damp morning in late February 2008 when the phone rang. Harvard scholar and PBS host Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. was calling with one of his random genealogical requests. He was going to be on The Colbert Report later that day. Did I, by any chance, know anything about Stephen Colbert’s roots? Luckily for him, I had two hundred years of family history at the ready.

Unnaturally obsessed with the ancestry of my fellow Irish Americans, I had already snooped into Stephen Tyrone Colbert’s past and discovered that he was about as Hibernian as they come. 15 of his 16 great-great-grandparents were either born in Ireland or of Irish heritage, and rather remarkably, their descendants continued to marry only with other Irish Americans for three generations until Stephen himself slightly disrupted the flow when he wed Evelyn “Evie” McGee. In his own words, “I have broken the pattern, and am in a mixed race marriage. I’m Irish, and my wife is Scots-Irish. Somehow we make it work.”

Several weeks after that call, my nosiness was rewarded when I woke up to the best St. Patrick’s Day gift possible — an email from Stephen thanking me and remarking that he was “thrilled to hear we are pretty much pure Irish.” Fortunately for all of us, this should-be poster child for Irish Americans assumed the throne of David Letterman’s Late Show in 2015, and has made the show well and truly his own – an anchor many of us watch to laugh away our worries. Though many mourned the loss of The Colbert Report, we now get to mellow out each evening to the man himself, rather than the character he portrayed for a decade. And as anyone who’s ever met Colbert will attest, the real man is brilliant, quick-witted, multi-talented, family-oriented, devout, and kind.

Family resemblance? (from left to right): Stephen T. Colbert, father James W. Colbert, uncle Andrew E. Tuck, grandfather Andrew E. Tuck, great-grandfather John C. Fee, and great-great-grandfather Patrick Connolly

An Ancestral Tour

So what sort of family tree produces a Stephen Colbert? Geographically concentrated in New York and Illinois upon arrival in America (in some instances, after a brief interval in Canada), the opposite is true in Ireland where all four provinces can lay claim to a piece of Stephen’s past. So dense and deep is his Irishness that I have little choice but to share it in digest form in order to give a short, yet fairly comprehensive tour of his ancestral map. To that end, I’ll focus on the immigrant generation, whomostly emigrated between the 1820s and 1860s, and provide a brief sketch of each pair of his great-great-grandparents. As you peruse these eight clusters, don’t be surprised if you notice some family patterns.

Colbert/Fletcher

Since we usually have the greatest interest in the surname we start out with, it’s a Murphy’s Law corollary that Colbert is the most mysterious branch in Stephen’s pedigree. It’salso a geographic exception with a third great-grandfather named Anthony, born in the 1790s, who settled in Shepherdstown in what was then Virginia. His descendants would swiftly scatter to Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, and California with Stephen’s line opting for the Land of Lincoln.

marriage license recording George W. Colbert’s race as Irish

Though stories have floated down through the generations of a possible French origin for the Colbert name, the few paper trail indications that exist all point to Ireland, including the marriage record ofStephen’s future great-grandfather, George William Colbert, that notes his race as Irish.

Family lore also holds that George converted to Catholicism for his marriage to Angeline Garin, an event which is said to have provoked a cross-burning in their yard. The tale relates that George calmed his new bride saying, “Let it burn. It sheds a lovely light.” While it’s not been possible to verify the incident, the dual-religion aspect rings true as George’s parents were married in the Lutheran church — perhaps because of his mother, Susan Ann Fletcher, who introduced the only non-Irish ancestry into the mix, a combination of German and English.

Garin/Caffery

George Colbert’s bride, Angeline Garin, was born in Carrollton, Illinois to immigrants Michael Garin and Bridget Caffery. Given that both Michael and Bridget, along with some of their parents and siblings, had crossed the Atlantic in the 1850s, the Famine was undoubtedly a driving factor in their decision to emigrate. The couple married around 1868 and settled amidst a cluster of family members in the Illinois counties of Greene and Macoupin.

The Garin name was a simplified version of one that that was spelled variously as Gearon and Guerin in earlier days, and a search of available church registries revealed that Michael’s parents, Michael Gearon and Johanna Nicholson, had married on January 29, 1834 in Limerick. Regrettably, the picture is hazier for Michael’s wife, Bridget Caffery, as documents pertaining to her family contradict themselves and mention both Dublin and Belfast.

Tormey/Manning

Yet another pair of great-great-grandparents who decided to keep their secrets to themselves is John Tormey and Honora Manning. In fact, the few traces they left make it unclear whether they were born in Ireland or New York. All that is reasonably certain is that they had a son, Henry John Tormey, bornbetween 1862 and 1866 in Staten Island. A couple that may be them appears in Castleton, New York in the 1860 census, but then the trail fades. It might have helped if their son had stayed put, but working as a railroad conductor, he bounced around from Staten Island to Port Jervis to Jersey City and finally to the Bronx. It’s lucky for Stephen that Henry was a wanderer, though, because it was in Port Jervis that he met his future wife, Maggie McCrory.

Baptism (in Latin) of daughter of John and Margaret Tormey that shows her parents’ birth places of Staten Island and Hibernia

McCrory/McCreash

Margaret Ann McCrory was the daughter of Henry McCrory and Margaret McCreash, and it’s the McCrory branch that indirectly contributed Stephen’s middle name of Tyrone. According to him, “The McCrorys were O’Neills way back, and the story was that one of the O’Neills had been the Earl of Tyrone, and so they named me Tyrone after him.”

While it’s conceivable that there’s a Tyrone connection back in the mists of time, the more immediate link is to Belfast where Henry “McRory” and Margaret “McReesh” were considerate enough to leave a critical clue for future generations by marrying in the Catholic Parish of St. Patrick, which has sacramental registers dating back to 1798. The McCrory-McCreash nuptials took place on October 8, 1842.

 
1842 marriage of Henry McCrory and Margaret McCreash (St. Patrick, Belfast)

Tuck/Dunn

Shifting gears from Stephen’s paternal ancestry to his mother’s side, more is known about the Tuck portion of his family tree than any other thanks to memoirs left by his great-grandfather, Andrew Tuck (1833–1917). Andrew wrote at length about the challenging start to his parents’ North American experience.

John Tuck and Judith (aka Julia) Dunn married in 1817 in what was then Queen’s County and is now Laois. More specifically, John was from Ballyhora(ha)n and Judith from nearby Camross. In the 1820s, John journeyed to Canada while Judith stayed behind with several children. The intention was for him to save money and return to Ireland to bring his wife and children back with him, but he made the mistake of turning over his earnings to his employer for safe-keeping. When the employer got into financial difficulties, John was left empty-handed and separated from his family.

After a number of years apart, Judith took matters into her own hands and traveled to Canada with their by-then, only surviving child, John Jr., and surprised her husband by showing up at the quarry where he worked one day in 1832. Shortly thereafter, the reunited family moved across the border to Lisbon, New York, where Andrew was born as he put it, “about the 9th of November, 1833 — I had no exact date of my birth — but the consensus of those who ought to be good authority is that it was about the 9th of November.”

Andrew Tuck’s memoirs go on to share details about walking to school (seven fences to cross if you took the short-cut and snow that caked up under your heels, crowding your feet out of your shoes), his family (including the birth of each child and the loss of a son to typhoid fever), his land purchases and building endeavors over the years (transaction by transaction, and decisions as minute as opting for a railing on a back stairway), his politics (“I was something of a political curiosity — an Irishman, a Republican”), his views on slavery and pride in voting for Lincoln (“It required courage, confidence and firmness”), and just about everything a curious descendant might hope for.

One of several obituaries for Andrew Tuck, Potsdam Courier Freeman, February 28, 1917

Lynch/Rowan

Andrew Tuck was fortunate enough to marry a woman he greatly admired named Maria Lynch. Maria was one of at least seven children of Thomas Lynch and Bridget Rowan, and like the Tuck-Dunns, her family had back-doored into upstate New York through Canada. From Smiths Falls, Ontario, they had moved to Ogdensburg and later Lisbon, New York.

The family made steady appearances in local records from the 1850s into the 1880s, but with the exception of a sister of Maria’s named Julia, vanished. Julia became a Grey Nun, assuming the name Sister Scholastica, a fitting choice as she would spend decades teaching. Her 1943 obituary offered a little insight into her personality and standards, commenting that, “It would have been difficult for a pupil to appear before her after shirking his duty.”

Extensive digging eventually turned up an article in a local newspaper that provided a vital clue in the disappearance of Maria’s parents. On April 23, 1886, their house burned down. Wasting no words, the piece stated, “Nothing was saved. No insurance.”

Succinct April 1886 article about the Lynch house fire

It was this event thatled the now-elderly Lynch immigrants to make one last move to Illinois where they would spend their twilight years with several of their children who were living in the Chicago area. And it was the death certificate of one of their sons that would furnish the only hint of their origins in Ireland — a frustratingly vague designation of Connaught.

Fee/McMahon

The Fee line is another one that left a generous paper trail, mainly because of their business interests. Owen Fee, who would marry Margaret McMahon in the late-1830s, was originally from County Monaghan, where tithe applotment booksinclude a man of his name in the townland of Drumaconvern about a decade earlier. His bride is believed to have been from Cootehill in the neighboring county of Cavan.

Owen emigrated in March 1835 and filed his intent to become a citizen in Rochester, New York in 1837. He worked as a butcher there, but passed away unexpectedly in 1855, leaving his widow Margaret with five children, the youngest of whom was only four. Margaret continued to run the family business as a grocery until her oldest son converted it to a saloon and deli in the early 1860s. Assessment lists from 1863 show Margaret being taxed as a “retail liquor dealer,” but it was that same year that her sons formally launched Fee Brothers which is still operating — and owned by cousins of Stephen’s — today.

The company evolved over time, adapting to circumstances as necessary. During Prohibition, for instance, it became a supplier of sacramental, “standard altar” wines which seems appropriate since two of the founding brothers, including Stephen’s great-grandfather, John C. Fee, were among the first altar boys when St. Bridget’s Church wasestablished in Rochester in 1854. Today Fee Brothers offers a variety of cocktail mixes, bitters and cordial syrups, and sports a logo which portrays the four brothers along with the slogan, “Don’t squeeze, use Fee’s.”

Connolly/Maloy

Rounding out Stephen’s eight pairs of great-great-grandparents are Patrick Connolly and Elizabeth Maloy. When Patrick made his way as a teenager from Knockaturly in County Monaghan to Rochester, New York in 1834, he was taking the first step toward building a new life as a successful merchant — initially in candles with his brother, James, and later specializing in “lace and fancy goods.” About the same year he crossed the ocean, his future wife was born in Rochester to Charles and Margaret Maloy who had emigrated from Kings County (now Offaly) in the 1820s.

Patrick and Margaret had one son and eight daughters. Two daughters died young and two dedicated themselves to the Sisters of Charity, serving in hospitals and orphanages. Their third child, Carolina, would eventually marry John C. Fee, joining two prosperous, Rochester families. It says something of the Connollys that when Patrick passed away, school books were among the first possessions specified in his estate papers to be held in reserve for his family.

Cherish the Ladies

All of this sprawling heritage was funneled to Stephen by way of his mostly second-generation great-grandparents, striving grandparents, and over-achieving parents. His father, in particular, was a man of singular accomplishment. Having acquired his medical training and skills at Columbia and Yale, James William Colbert, Jr., M.D., served with the U.S. Army’s Medical Corps and as Assistant Dean of the Yale University School of Medicine, before becoming at age 32, the youngest person to hold the deanship of a medical school (at St. Louis). He later moved on to NIH, and finally to the Medical University of South Carolina. Along the way, he still found time to serve on a number of health and medical boards, and as Co-Chairman of Doctors for Kennedy during the 1960 Presidential campaign.

John F. Kennedy and James W. Colbert, Jr., M.D. in 1960 (JFK Library, www.jfklibrary.org/)

And then there’s his mother, Lorna Elizabeth (Tuck) Colbert, who bore and raised 11 children, the youngest of whom was Stephen. Tragically losing her only brother in the immediate aftermath of World War II and then her husband and two sons, Paul and Peter, in a plane crash in 1974, Lorna was able to do far more than persevere. As Stephen explained at the time of her passing, “Her love for her family and her faith in God somehow gave her the strength not only to go on, but to love life without bitterness, and to instill in all of us a gratitude for every day we have together.” Giving us a sense of her spirit and joie de vivre, he continued, “I know that it may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long, but the fact that my mother was 92 does not diminish. It only magnifies the enormity of the room whose door has now quietly shut.”

Listening to these words again after having just steeped myself in Stephen’s family history, I realized that they carried some echoes from the past. As we’ve already seen, Stephen’s extended family features nuns who ran schools, hospitals and orphanages. His great-great-grandmother, Judith (Dunn) Tuck, had ventured to North America in 1832 to reunite the long-separated pieces of her family. Another second great-grandmother, Margaret (McMahon) Fee, had taken over her husband’s business when he died and mortgaged her home to enable her oldest son to establish Fee Brothers in 1863. When his great-grandmother, Maria (Lynch) Tuck passed, her obituary noted that she “was of a splendid type of ostentatious Christian womanhood, a sacrificing helpmeet and a devoted mother.” And in his last letter home before his loss in a vehicle accident in Austria, Stephen’s uncle had written home, “Mother, how can a man be better while in a shower of your love and understanding?”

The remarkable women of Stephen Colbert’s family tree: wife Evelyn McGee-Colbert, mother Lorna (Tuck) Colbert, grandmothers Marie (Fee) Tuck and Mary (Tormey) Colbert, great-grandmother Carolina (Connolly) Fee, and great-great-grandmother Elizabeth (Maloy) Connolly

Ruminating on the topic of marriage, Andrew Tuck, the ancestor who left such thoughtful memoirs, reminisced that his future wife first made an impression on him with the way she acquitted herself when called on in geography class. He recalled a minister who preached that, “when a man married, he raised or lowered himself a step,” and referred to this sentiment as “an absolute truth.” Clearly regarding himself as having coming out ahead in the bargain, he went on to say of his own marriage, “Ours was the case of the unknown wife of the fairly well known husband, and when the latter left home, he often left more brains at home than he took with him, where often most needed, and with better results.”

Andrew was spelling out what had gradually dawned on me. The secret sauce of Stephen Colbert’s family tree is one of amazing women and the men who were smart enough to find and marry them. Stephen might jokingly claim that he broke the family pattern by entering into a “mixed marriage” with a Scots-Irish woman, but with his wise choice of Evie McGee, he’s keeping alive the tradition that matters most.

Similar articles: Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, Pharrell, Rachel Maddow

Note: An earlier version of this appeared in Irish America.

The post The Amazing Women in Stephen Colbert’s Family Tree appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Aisne-Marne Cemetery caretaker and me as a youngster

I was born into an American military family stationed in France, and as the first child of young parents (20 and 24 at the time of my arrival), had the good fortune of being carted along on a number of European adventures during my toddler years. My father, George C. Smolenyak, was an avid photographer, and like some at the time, had a preference for slides over pictures. As a result, assorted moments from my earliest years have been preserved in these miniature transparencies.

My father was a meticulous man with a remarkable memory, so could easily rattle off locations and other specifics decades after the fact — details which inevitably matched the labels he had recorded on the slides’ edges when he first created them. Dad had a few favorites he enjoyed telling stories about, such as my first encounter with snow in the Pyrenees or that time I kept everyone in a small hotel awake with my bawling, but there was one in particular he told repeatedly.

His tidy script notes that it was the “American caretaker, Belleau Woods Cemetery, France” and the slide shows this man bending over to chat with 18-month-old me. I’m clutching a branch he had apparently just handed over.

Dad’s caption on the slide

Time and time again, Dad explained that this gentleman was an American soldier who had served in World War I, stayed in France and married a local woman, and worked at Aisne-Marne Cemetery where 2,289 Americans are buried. When my father asked him while he had remained in France, he responded simply, “To take care of my buddies.”

This moment-in-time has always been special to me — partly due to Dad’s vignette and the snippet of my history it holds, but also because it foreshadows my later experience. I’ve spent years working with the U.S. Army assisting with the on-going effort to identify our soldiers who are still unaccounted for from past conflicts ranging from World War I to Vietnam. As it happens, I recently reached a random but timely milestone of having researched 1776 soldiers as of this year, America’s 250th anniversary. In my mind, this snapshot captures the instant this amiable veteran had just passed the baton so I could one day also help take care of his buddies.

For this reason, it has tormented me that I didn’t know who this man was. I asked Dad several times hoping that his impressive memory would suddenly toss out a name, but no such luck. But I’m a professional genealogist. I should be able to unearth his name, right?

It wasn’t for lack of trying, but as those who are familiar with American records know, our twentieth century military personnel records are sketchy at best since so many went up in flames (or were swamped by water) in a 1973 fire. So how could I find him? All I knew was that he had served in WWI, married a French woman, worked at this cemetery, and was still there in the 1960s. Where to start?

Then it occurred to me. What about those record sets for Americans living abroad? Ancestry doesn’t make them prominent, but if you search their catalog for relevant collections, you’ll pop up several including the following:

U.S., Consular Reports of Marriages, 1910–1949

U.S., Consular Posts, Emergency Passport Applications, 1915–1926

U.S., Consular Registration Certificates, 1907–1918

U.S., Consular Reports of Births, 1910–1949

U.S., Consular Registration Applications, 1916–1925

U.S., Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835–1974

U.S., Registration Certificates — Widows, Divorced Women, & Minors, 1907–1914

I didn’t have a name, but did I perhaps have enough other information to ferret him out? I took a dive leaving the name fields blank and entering “Aisne” and “Belleau” instead in location and keyword fields. Most came up empty, but I eventually got some hits with the 1910–1949 birth index. Seven children had been born to six couples in the relevant vicinity and time frame. Of course, I didn’t know for sure that my mystery man had any children, but it seemed a reasonable possibility, so now it was a matter of narrowing the field.

I researched each of the six men. Not surprisingly, all had married French women, but a couple had birth dates that suggested they were too old to be the fellow I was seeking. Another struck me as unlikely as he was a naturalized American citizen from Romania, and my father, hailing from a Slavic family himself would have inevitably remarked on the man’s origins and accent. But all this was a bit speculative. Fortunately, I was able to eliminate several because U.S. records showed that they had moved back to the States well before the 1960s. I was soon down to two. What could I use as a tie-breaker? Maybe passport photos? Yes! Both had photos taken in the 1920s. One of them was almost bald even as a young man, so it had to be the other one.

I was now looking at Charles William Anderson along with his wife and daughter. After all this time, I finally knew his name, and it made me smile to have spotted him with his own toddler.

Passport photos as seen on Ancestry

I’ll detour for a moment for those who might be new to research to mention that it’s often worth checking whether a particular resource is available in more than one site as a quick look into FamilySearch’s full-text collection turned up a much cleaner version of this same image.

Same photos as seen in FamilySearch’s full-text collection

I was confident I had the right man, but genealogists can never get enough substantiation, so the final leg of my research was tracing his family forward and reaching out to his descendants. One of them — surprised, but pleased to be contacted out of the blue — responded and confirmed that the man in the slide was indeed Charles W. Anderson, a fellow she recalled as her kindly grandfather.

It had taken much longer than I would have wished, but my own unknown soldier now has a name. If Dad were still with us, today would have been his 90th birthday, and while he’s not here to tell, I’d like to think that somehow he and Charles know. Happy birthday, Dad, and thanks for indulging this one-time toddler, Charles.

Note: While I occasionally use AI for image-generation, all my articles are written by me and AI images will be identified as such.

The post Identifying the Mystery Man in My Baby Photo appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

But on the few occasions I’ve gone ahead anyway, I’ve almost always wound up tripping across neglected or hidden pockets of ancestry, so when a journalist friend reached out with a specific request involving Taylor Swift, I agreed. I admire the hell out of her, so why not?

As is my habit, I started from scratch (too much sloppy research floating out there online that can lead you astray), and it didn’t take long to answer his question. That should have been the end of it, but an intriguing ancestor — the genealogical equivalent of a shiny object — had grabbed my attention and I had to know more.

In this case, it was a colorful great-grandfather who made me dig deeper, but once I did, it was his mother and his mother’s mother I couldn’t get enough of. And while it wasn’t Taylor’s beloved grandmother Marjorie’s branch, it was the one that had produced a man worthy of her.

Shiny Object Ancestor

So why did this particular great-grandfather make me do a double take? Well, his name was George Finlay, but sometime in his twenties, he appended the name of Lancelot. After that, he mostly went by Lance.

That raised an eyebrow.

George Finlay in his late 50s circa 1932 (New York, U.S. District and Circuit Court Naturalization Records, 1824–1991, FamilySearch)

Before long, I found a record that said he had been born at sea. OK, this was becoming more interesting.

As I followed his paper trail, though, I found five documents citing an “at sea” birth, but another ten saying England and a further five stating Scotland. Hmmm…did he have something to hide? Given that he bounced around New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, New York, Rhode Island, and — oh, yeah, Trinidad and maybe Cuba — it was certainly a possibility.

Then there were his four wives, the last of whom — the keeper — would become Taylor’s great-grandmother. Seems Lance was a turn-of-the-(last)-century player.

And those first three wives came equipped with their own stories. One was born in Florida in the 1860s to a Polish father. That might not strike you as odd, but to put into perspective how unusual that would have been, only 20 Polish-born men lived in Florida around the time of her birth. Another wife had a brother who infuriated the family by leaving the bulk of his fortune ($300,000 in 1936 or roughly $6.6 million today) to British soldiers blinded and wounded in World War I — quite a surprise since they had immigrated to the United States almost 60 years earlier. This wife also had a child with Lance, so whether he knew it or not, Taylor’s grandfather had a half-sibling about 20 years his senior. And the last of this trio of wives had another husband who created the Museum of the American Indian (now part of the Smithsonian) and yet another who died in an “industrial accident” when mauled by a lion on a Los Angeles movie set.

Born Adrift?

These earlier wives offered fun diversions for a curious genealogist, but let’s get back to that “at sea” birth. I had 20 records with competing places of birth: Scotland, at sea, and England (sometimes specified as Southampton).

Scotland, I gradually realized, was a bit of an obsession with Lance. He wasn’t born there, but wrongly thought his father — who turned out to be from a well-to-do family in Ireland — was. He also claimed to have obtained his education at the University of Glasgow, though I couldn’t find his name among graduates of that era. It’s clear that he possessed considerable engineering expertise, even securing a patent, so perhaps he had studied there, but not finished? Whatever the case, I could eliminate Scotland as his place of his birth.

Declaration of Intention for Lance George Finlay. Among other things, it reveals that he was 5’9” and 187 pounds with dark hair and complexion, and brown eyes. (U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Ohio. FamilySearch)

Half of the documents cited England, and I did indeed find a birth certificate for him in Southampton, but that didn’t rule out the possibility of his having been born at sea. His November 16th birth wasn’t registered until December 31st, and U.K. sea births from 1854 on were supposed to be filed on ships’ logs and again on land after docking. I’ve searched Marine (and foreign birth) collections available online and nothing pops out, and yet, by the time I tripped across a declaration of intention (to become a citizen on the United States) specifying that his birth occurred “enroute, Cape Town, Africa to London, England,” it was exactly the navigational crossing I was expecting. And that was because of his mother, Emma.

Unshakable Emma

Emma Maria Williams was English, but only spent about three years of her first three decades in England. In fact, she began life in Malta. Born on the 18th of January in 1843, she joined a naval family as their only daughter.

It’s doubtful she remembered much about Malta, as her family returned to Stoke Damerel (now essentially a part of Plymouth in Devonshire, now known as Devon) — where her parents were originally from — when she was about four or five. That’s where the 1851 census found her with her “seaman’s wife” mother and little brother. Her father was absent, typical in such families.

When she was about eight, her family picked up again and moved to Simon’s Town, South Africa — slightly south of Cape Town.

Marriage of Thomas Whiffin and Emma Maria Williams in Simon’s Town, South Africa, 24 April 1860 (Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801–2004, FamilySearch)

At the age of 17, Emma married Thomas Whiffin, about ten years her senior. Thomas was a tidewaiter, a Customs official who boarded ships upon arrival to enforce regulations. This combination of naval and Customs work contributed to generations of meandering in the family, and while there were plenty of people traipsing the globe on behalf of the British Empire back then, that doesn’t diminish the hardship of such journeys in the 19th century. Emma’s life, while not an easy one, was representative of this portion of Taylor’s family tree that seems to have injected wanderlust into her gene pool, a trait she apparently inherited.

During the first decade of married life, Emma adhered to the usual pattern at the time, giving birth like clockwork every other year — 1861, 1863, 1865, 1867, and 1869 — but she never had more than two children alive at once because all but her eldest died by the age of 26 months. After a brief gap, she had another child in 1873, which would have been cause for celebration — that is, if her husband hadn’t died four months earlier. This brutal series of losses is captured on a tombstone for her husband and their four babies in the Seaforth Old Burying Ground and Garden of Remembrance.

Tombstone of Thomas Whiffin and four of his and Emma’s children (used with kind permission of Peter H) (Find a Grave memorial for Thomas Whiffin (1833–1872), Memorial ID 197256778, Seaforth Old Burying Ground and Garden of Remembrance, Seaforth, City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality, Western Cape, South Africa; Maintained by Peter H, contributor 47423563)

So ten days past her 30th birthday, Emma found herself widowed with a tween and an infant. It’s not a stretch to imagine that the saving grace that kept her from floundering was having her mother and a few brothers nearby in Simon’s Town. She at least had some support, but then two years later, her mother died.

This might have been what caused her return to England, a country she had spent so little time in, but there was another factor at play: Emma was pregnant again. The father was a naval officer from a posh family named George Finlay, and the hint that he was the instigation is that she went to Hampshire, where he was from, rather than Devonshire, where her own family had its roots.

Whether they married or not is unclear. I haven’t found a record, but that’s not unusual with couples on the move, and there’s conflicting evidence (such as when George married another woman several years later claiming to be a bachelor). Regardless, Emma moved to his home base in England, used the Finlay surname for about a decade, and named their son after him, so whether there was a wedding or not, there was undoubtedly an expectation of one.

And yes, the timing suggests that Emma may well have given birth at sea “enroute, Cape Town, Africa to London, England” as noted in one of George Jr.’s (aka Lance’s) documents. Even if she made it to land before delivering, she had made the long voyage very pregnant.

Then she was left on her own in a place she had never lived, but Emma was resourceful. The 1881 census found her living in Portsea supporting her son and two daughters as a stationer and tobacconist.

1881 census for Emma and her family (U.K. Public Record Office as seen on Ancestry)

Portsea rang a bell so I consulted some research I did years ago and was amused to find Taylor’s ancestors living midway — about a mile in each direction — between a pair of Biden families who are related to our President. Cue the next wacky conspiracy theory about Joe Biden and Taylor Swift’s relatives of yore getting together in a Portsea pub in the 1880s to orchestrate the outcome of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election!

Returning to Emma, her sorrows still weren’t over as she lost yet another child in 1887 leaving her with her Finlay son and a daughter who was now the last survivor from her first marriage. But there were also some gentle consolations. She had given up on George Finlay (Sr.), relocated to Devonshire, her own family’s home county, and found companionship by remarrying — this time to a Navy instructor named George Downer. Theirs was a happier union as they stayed together until his death. She lived another decade, finally passing away at 66.

You already know what became of her son, and as I write these words, Taylor is performing in Sydney, Australia, so it’s worth mentioning that her remaining daughter’s descendants eventually settled in New South Wales, meaning that odds are good there are cousins in the crowd.

Emma Maria (Williams) Whiffin Finlay(?) Downer, Taylor’s future great-great-grandmother, was made of sterner stuff. Born into a seafaring family and bouncing around Malta, England, and South Africa, she was an early globetrotter. A mother of seven, she endured the agony of watching five of her children go to untimely graves. Widowed young, and a few years later, abandoned in a country she had only resided in briefly as a child, she never stopped and somehow found a way to just keep cruisin’. And at least some of her remarkable fortitude was attributable to her own mother.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Mary Ann Newcombe was born in Plymouth, England around 1812, and in 1830, married a mariner named John Benjamin Williams. She and John had five children over two decades — more spaced out than most due to the amount of time he spent at sea, a notion supported by his Royal Navy allotment declarations. So Mary Ann was married, but for frequent stretches would have felt like a single mother. That said, she would have had the comfort of this also being true of many of her neighbors.

Sometime around 1840, her husband’s career caused the family to move to Malta. As best as I’ve been able to ascertain, they lived in or near Sliema. It was here that she would give birth to her only daughter whose story you’ve just learned, but not before losing her first-born. Eight-year-old John Benjamin was buried in Malta in 1842 while his father was serving as Master of the HMS Media.

Death of Mary Ann and John’s first-born (Malta Family History — with thanks to avid genealogists who generously placed this information online and to the WaybackMachine for preserving it)

The family later returned to England for a few years before shifting once more to South Africa sometime between April 1851 and May 1852. This narrow time frame means that Mary Ann likely made the journey pregnant since she gave birth to her last child in Simon’s Town in early June of 1852. Though she’d have no way of knowing it, she was setting an accidental precedent for her daughter’s at-sea experience a couple of decades later.

In spite of events in South Africa at the time, the period that followed was probably the most settled portion of Mary Ann’s life. She had her children with her and even her husband, as he took a hospital dispensary position, presumably so they could all be together. Simon’s Town would have been quieter than they were used to, but with moments of excitement such as Emma’s wedding in 1860 and later that same year when Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Alfred, arrived. He served in the Navy and was the first member of the royal family to visit South Africa. Some locals wanted to mark the occasion by changing the name of their community to Alfred’s Town, but Simon managed to hold his own.

This interlude ended when her husband died in 1863. This left her with two sons, ages 11 and 16, at home, but her older children were married and living in the area, so she wasn’t entirely on her own. At this point, Mary Ann could have opted to go to England, but decided instead to spend the rest of her life in Simon’s Town, where she would be buried with her husband a dozen years later.

Burial record for John B. Williams (Cape Province, South Africa Cemetery Records, 1886–2010, FamilySearch)

Mary Ann and John’s wandering ways from the 1830s to the 1850s set a pattern in the family going forward — one that can be illustrated by logging the places of birth and death of their five children. Notice that no two of their children share the same birth-death country pairing.

Places of birth and death for the children of Mary Ann and John Williams

As we’ve already seen, the oldest died as a youngster in Malta, and Emma went back to England. So did the youngest son, Walter, but not before he had spent a long career in Customs in China. Because of him, Taylor has a family member buried in Hong Kong as his first wife sadly died there.

Tombstone of Annie Williams, wife of Walter (Hong Kong Memory, courtesy of Patricia Lim)

The other two sons stayed in South Africa, meaning that Taylor also has kin there. Then again, some of their descendants dispersed adding Northern Ireland, Kenya, and Guernsey in the Channel Islands into the mix. So thanks to her second and third great-grandmothers, Taylor’s relatives may not be quite as widespread as Swifties, but it’s not for lack of trying. Give ’em another generation or two and there’ll be cousins in every audience! And now that their stories have been shared, may their adventurous and resilient ancestors, Mary Ann and Emma, always be remembered.

Superfluous, AI-generated image just because I like it. I’m sure many of you know which song inspired it.

The post Taylor Swift’s Formidable Female Forebears appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Annie Moore and Arne Pareli Pettersen, first and last through Ellis Island, seen together for the first time

Annie Moore and Arne Pettersen were Ellis Island’s bookends. An Irish teenager, Annie was the first to arrive when the immigration processing center opened its doors on January 1, 1892. 62 years later on November 12, 1954, Norwegian seaman Arne would be the last to depart. Both experienced a fleeting moment of fame before falling through the cracks of history for decades to come.

Annie Moore and her brothers (colorized)

Annie re-emerged in the late-1980s in conjunction with the re-opening of Ellis Island as a museum site, but working on a PBS documentary in 2002, I discovered that the Annie being touted had been born in Illinois rather than Ireland. That was the easy part. Finding Ellis Island’s true Annie Moore would take me another four years.

Now that Annie’s story was known, it was only natural that I would turn my attention to Arne. Had he become an American citizen? Did he return to Norway? Maybe he settled elsewhere or died at sea. I had to know what happened to him.

But like Annie, he was evasive — at least in part for the same reason: his name was so common, especially when you considered all the potential spellings (Pettersen, Petersen, Petterson, Peterson, etc.). Time after time, I scoured both online and offline resources, but came up empty or uncertain. Until now. Years later, Ellis Island’s last has finally surrendered his secrets.

Arne’s Departure

Over time, Ellis Island’s raison d’être evolved from processing immigrants to detaining them. As a seaman, Arne had journeyed to and from America six or seven times by his own estimate, but in 1954 he overstayed his shore leave. Non-immigrant crewmen were allowed to remain in the U.S. for up to 29 days, but by the time a warrant for his arrest was signed, he had been here six months. Officers Trief and Harri arrested him in Brooklyn and sent him to Ellis Island. At his hearing, he applied for the privilege of voluntary departure, saying that this was the first time he had stayed longer than permitted and he would ship out shortly (spoiler alert: neither was true).

Arne was granted parole to leave on his own within a designated time period, and this was the moment when he was captured for posterity waving as he left Ellis Island. Newspapers across the country featured his image. Most identified him as hailing from Narvik, Norway (he was from Larvik, and it didn’t help that there is indeed a city called Narvik as well) and claimed that he was “paroled to an unidentified friend who will sponsor his citizenship” (not so). Spellings in the assorted articles varied and included Petterson, Peterssen, and even one that had it correct.

What Really Happened

So what became of Arne after his turn in the spotlight? He returned to Norway — eventually.

At the hearing associated with the closing of Ellis Island, he was given until December 10th to remove himself by signing on to another ship (the expression “self-deport” comes to mind). This didn’t work out, so he sought a two-week extension to December 24th. His request was granted, but by February of 1955, he was still here, making it necessary to re-apprehend him. This time, he was denied the opportunity for voluntary departure, and on February 16, 1955, Arne was finally deported on the M.S. Stockholm.

Departure of Alien for Arne Pettersen (Alien Case File, National Archives, Kansas City)

Dates recorded in his paperwork made it easy to determine that he was the same fellow from the newspaper accounts, but any lingering doubts were removed by a note in his case file that stated: “This is the alien that got all the publicity — TV etc., as the last detainee released from the Island when it closed last November.”

Note in Arne Pettersen’s Alien Case File (National Archives, Kansas City)

Not a First Timer

This same file revealed that this was not the first chapter of Arne’s misadventures with immigration officials in America.

Claim of first overstay (National Archives, Kansas City)

Though he professed at his November 1954 hearing that he had “been a seaman for the past 30 years and this is the first time I have ever overstayed my shore leave,” it turned out he had a short memory. Arne had done the exact same thing in December 1953.

Oral Decision of the Special Inquiry Officer (National Archives, Kansas City)

In this previous instance, he testified that he had intended to remain with the ship he arrived on, but came ashore and missed the boat because he was drunk. But even this wasn’t his first flirtation with deportation. Before getting to that, though, let’s rewind to his early years.

Pre-Ellis Island

Arne Pareli Pettersen was born to Albert Angel Karl Pettersen and Olianna Margrethe Nilsdotter in Meløy, Norway on February 11, 1902. This exact date of birth (along with its reversed month and day version of November 2nd) would prove helpful in narrowing the field of candidates with similar names.

Baptism of Arne Pareli Pettersen (The National Archives of Norway)

One of four children, he was a bit of an afterthought, being six years younger than his next eldest sibling. When he was only 17 months old, life dealt him a blow with the death of his mother. His father swiftly remarried resulting in a pair of younger sisters for Arne. The family moved steadily south down Norway’s western coast from Meløy to Bindal and finally to Åkra where he would eventually lose both his father and stepmother when he was 25.

Aside from this, his early years are hazy. Although it’s reasonable to assume that he was a seafarer from a young age, he claimed in various depositions to have first come to America in 1929, 1930 and 1940, providing a bit of a fuzzy target. Assuming 1929 is the correct date, an arrival record that fits well with him provides the only specific details of the tattoos on his arms that would be mentioned a number of times in other documents: “lady flag right, ship left arm.”

Description of tattoos from 1929 arrival record (Ancestry)

Other physical descriptions of him put him in the 5’9”-5’11” range and anywhere from 150 to 175 pounds (lighter as he aged). His eyes were brown and his hair would morph from brown to grey over time.

In 1938, he married Petra Margrethe Olafsen with whom he would have one son (now deceased). Like many who spent a large portion of their lives at sea, it’s possible that he had mixed feelings about being a family man, as just a half dozen years later, he would declare that he was single with no children. By the 1950s, though, he readily acknowledged his wife and son.

1938 marriage (The National Archives of Norway)

Wartime Service

Shortly after this this spell of domesticity, it’s much easier to pick up Arne’s trail thanks to Krigsseilerregisteret, a register of Norwegian seafarers during World War II (1939–1945). This invaluable resource logs Arne’s 15 wartime engagements noting ships, dates, and locations. From this, it’s clear that he spent most of the war at sea with journeys lasting from one week to ten months.

Arne’s wartime engagements (Krigsseilerregisteret)

Equipped with the information provided in this database, it’s also possible to dovetail his movements with his sporadic appearances in the U.S. For instance, on October 16, 1940, he was in Brooklyn, so was recorded in America’s WWII draft registration.

WWII Draft Registration Card (Ancestry)

Checking this date against the Norwegian seaman register reveals that he had arrived in New York almost six weeks earlier on September 6th. This duration meant that he had overstayed his shore leave, though there’s no indication he was ever investigated for it. Perhaps a concern that this paper trail could put him on the American government’s radar or the prospect of being drafted into U.S. military service motivated him to clear out. Regardless, he joined the crew of the M/S Oslofjord as an assistant electrician on the 22nd, but soon had reason to wish he hadn’t.

Krigsseilerregisteret notes that the ship was “minesprengt” on December 1st. A quick google search shows that the Oslofjord hit a mine “in the North Sea off the coast of England off the River Tyne.” For unclear reasons, it didn’t sink until three weeks later and the wreck remains underwater until this day.

At this point, Arne began a series of shorter engagements mostly to and from Newcastle and Glasgow with an occasional long haul such as the time he ventured to South Africa in 1941–1942. In late 1943, he mixed things up by signing on for a trip to Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. From there, he took a short stint on the M/T Gylfe from Halifax to New York and that’s when he had his first known rendezvous with American immigration officials.

First Immigration Encounter

Arriving on May 2, 1944, he headed once again to Brooklyn. Just as he had in 1940, he loitered and ignored the usual time restrictions, but this time, he was caught. A warrant for his arrest was executed on June 16th and he was taken to Ellis Island the same day.

1944 warrant for arrest (National Archives, Kansas City)

It was during this investigation that Arne claimed to be single and childless. Perhaps he had been away from home for so long that it felt that way to him or maybe he thought providing these details would complicate matters. He had also failed to register under the terms of the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (aka Smith Act) for the simple reason that he wasn’t aware of it. As a result, he was fingerprinted.

claim of having no wife or children (National Archives, Kansas City)

Fingerprints taken in 1944 (National Archives, Kansas City)

Arne stated that he was willing to re-ship, but this was somewhat contradicted by exchanges with the Norwegian Consulate which explained that he was supposed to have left on a ship called the Balla in early June, but had deserted. Even so, he was allowed to sign up with the M/T Østhav on June 29th, but not before leaving a valuable souvenir — his photo. In all likelihood, the last time someone laid eyes on this image was when his file was closed in 1955.

1944 photo of Arne Pettersen

This mug shot style photo mistakenly identifies him as Arne O. Pettersen, but a search of arrivals in the U.S. found no other such man and comparison to his future 1954 departure image makes it apparent that this is a younger version of the same fellow. The error seems to have stemmed from a bit of careless paperwork done when he was being fingerprinted and photographed.

Post-War

It seems that Arne had had enough excitement for a while as his remaining gigs during the war centered on the Caribbean, but he had done his bit, so was awarded a couple of medals from Norway for his service. After the war, the sea still had a claim on him and he resumed crossing the Atlantic.

Crew records show him arriving in America several more times over the latter half of the 1940s and first half of the 1950s — until the pair of 1953–1955 transgressions that ultimately led to his being the last to depart Ellis Island. After he was booted in February 1955, there’s no evidence of his returning.

After years of meandering, Arne finally settled in Larvik where he died just days after his 75th birthday on February 14, 1981. According to a Scandinavian grave site database (Slekt og Data Gravminnebasen), he was buried on the 19th at Undersbo Cemetery. His wife passed away nine years later.

Undersbo Cemetery in Larvik, Norway where Arne Pareli Pettersen is buried

All told, Arne overstayed his welcome at least four times — 1940, 1944, 1953 and 1954. It’s hard to say why. Maybe he wanted to become American, maybe he was careless with dates, or maybe he had a girlfriend in Brooklyn. We’ll probably never know. But 66 years after his last-at-Ellis Island adventure and almost four decades after his death, we do at least know what became of him. Just as he waved farewell to Ellis Island, we can finally bid adieu to the mystery of the Norwegian seaman.

The post Solving the Mystery of Arne Pettersen, the Last to Leave Ellis Island appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.