Kindred Spirits Four Hundred Years of an American Family

by Bellamy, Joe David

• ISBN13: 9781935557722
• ISBN10: 1935557726
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-26
• Publisher: PublishingWorks

Summary

Kindred Spirits is an engaging memoir about family and an urgent quest for identity—uncovering the deep ancestral history of one ordinary-seeming American family whose past is revealed with unprecedented sweep, detail, and clarity.

Bellamy's genealogical odyssey will be a revelation to anyone interested in his or her own family story or to anyone who has ever wondered what it would mean to meet one’s ancestors. Scientific advances such as DNA testing and recent opportunities via internet research have given genealogy and family history new credibility that has made it the second most popular subject area on the internet after pornography—and an obsession with baby-boomers.

In describing the phenomenon of the new genealogy, and employing its methods, Bellamy tells a captivating story about the struggles of the earliest European pioneers to gain a foothold in the New World and combines this story with a personal narrative of unusual candor and interest.

This is a book about a quest—set off by the death of a beloved mother—for the facts about her family’s past and that of her deceased husband. What it uncovers is the deep ancestral history of one ordinary-seeming American family whose past is revealed with unprecedented sweep, detail, and clarity. The son who spends his bereaved hours searching for clues in court houses, libraries, cemeteries, and on the internet, finds more than he ever bargained for—a past that no one in the family ever knew before or ever could have known without the resources now available for unearthing the past.

Bellamy’s genealogical odyssey will be a revelation to anyone interested in his or her own family story and to anyone who has ever wondered what it would mean to meet one’s ancestors close up. Kindred Spirits tells a captivating story about the struggles of the earliest European colonists to gain a foothold in the New World and combines this story with a personal narrative of unusual candor and interest.

Table of Contents

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World	p. 1
A Magical Relationship	p. 11
The Missing	p. 17
The Spaldings and the Adams Connection	p. 27
American Society of the Descendants of Peasants and Minorities	p. 37
Princess Di Stole My Pedigree	p. 45
Kissing Cousins	p. 51
Our Year in Bloomville	p. 59
The Greatest Pitcher in Baseball	p. 71
We Got Beef	p. 75
The Great Migration	p. 81
Rev. Bulkeley's Departure	p. 87
The Man of Big Prayer	p. 93
Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Mennonites	p. 105
The Von Gemmingen Connection	p. 115
Lewis/Ludwig Seitz's Life in America	p. 121
Hannah Siple	p. 131
The Hard-Luck Kagys	p. 141
The End of the Farm	p. 149
The Plymouth Colony and Charlemagne	p. 157
The Spanish Armada and Rev. John Lothrop	p. 165
Be Fruitful and Multiply	p. 175
New England Ancestors of Lovely Alice Whipple Clark	p. 183
The Search for Experience Cook	p. 191
We've Got Bacon As Well As Beef, Or Do We?	p. 199
White Slaves	p. 205
The Headright System, Driving Force for Slavery	p. 213
Adam Thoroughgood Bellamy	p. 221
The Girl Next Door-Bickertons and Bulkeleys (Again)	p. 227
The Oldest Man Ever to Die in Oklahoma	p. 237
The Civil War Record	p. 245
Pig Iron	p. 261
Open Heart	p. 267
Last Trip to Bloomville	p. 273
Epilogue-There's My Blimp!	p. 281
Appendix	p. 289
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 299
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.