A few weeks ago, I was at the wonderful Maine state library (an excellent place!) and saw a new biography of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, one of the Peabody sisters of Salem.
Since I have people named Peabody in several places in my tree, I wondered where she fit in as a relation. Turns out she's a second cousin several times removed.
Which got me to thinking further.... as genealogists, most of us focus on our direct ancestors, often only looking at siblings and cousins to help work further back on a direct line. But ~ if I'd been born in an earlier generation ~ Elizabeth, Sophia, and Mary are people I would have likely seen at family weddings, run into at holiday meals, and sat next to at summer picnics.
So.... I started thinking about which close-ish relatives (siblings/aunts/uncles and first cousins... maybe as distant as second cousins but no further ~ no third, fourth, or more distant cousins) that I would have liked to meet and/or be influenced by if I ignored the 'removeds' in the relationships and pretended I happened to have born in an earlier generation.
Obviously, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (promoter of kindergarten in the USA and involved in both the Transcendental and early women's rights movements) and her sisters Sophia (an illustrator who married Nathaniel Hawthorne) and Mary Tyler Peabody (a teacher and author who married Horace Mann) would be high on this list. But they are interesting enough that (despite being the impetus for my ponderings) they are going to get their own diary one of these days ;-)
So, who else would have I run across if I'd been born in a previous generation?
Picking a random couple ('cuz I need to save a few I have more details and/or good stories about for future diaries {grin}):
When I was looking for details on John L. Waterman, a several greats-uncle, it made sense to look at Civil War service records, as he was born about 1842, so was 19 or so when the war started. Found him listed as a second lieutenant for the First Colored Cavalry ~ although he was as white as can be. Not surprisingly, as I looked further, several other relatives in that family were noted in membership lists for various abolitionist societies. Yeah, those would have been interesting family to chat with at social events ;-)
Another interesting first cousin several times removed is William Wallace Silvester ~ had his birth in my database, but hadn't bothered to get more details until this summer's database clean-up, where I'm filling in missing spouses and death dates.
Silvester was an Episcopalian who became rector of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia ~ he was evidently influential in getting the church building completed. Interesting aside: the Church of the Adovcate, long after William W. Silvester was rector, was the site (according to the National Register of Historic Places entry for the church, as described here) of the "Third Annual National Conference on Black Power in 1968 and the 1970 Black Panther conference to rewrite the constitution." It was also the church where the Philadelphia Eleven were ordained, before the Episcopal church officially recognized women's ordination. But Silvester's service as rector helped set the stage for those events ;-)
So ~ which close-ish relative (who wasn't a direct ancestor)
would you have most liked to sit next to at a family dinner?
They don't need to be famous ~ just interesting ;-)