| Colonel Edwin Van Deusen Selden was an oil
producer and refiner of Oil City, PA. He was born
almost a century and a half ago, and was a member
of the Order of Founders & Patriots of
America. He was one of the people in the original
edition of the F&P Family Forest, and of
course he is on the new A&E disc. A ten
generation ancestor view of him fills in only 32
of his ancestors, meaning that there are far more
dead ends than continuing lines. The line of his
father's father's father's father's etc. travels
the full ten generations, and leads back to early
Connecticut, via Virginia.
But to which exciting places might many of
those dead end maternal lines lead? Yesterday I
discovered a few of those places.
One of Colonel Selden's grandmothers was
Louise Sophie Shattuck. She was a mystery (other
than knowing that she married George Selden, had
at least one son named George Shattuck Selden,
and was the grandmother of Colonel Selden). No
dates. No places. No other children. No Shattuck
connections.
A reasonable guess, based on her surname,
would be that she was probably born in New
England. But that guess misses the mark by more
than a thousand miles. She was born a world away
from New England on April 24, 1801 on the island
of St. Thomas in the Caribbean. Louise's mother
was the daughter of Alexander de Vincent, the
governor of St. Thomas.
Yesterday morning Louise Sophie Shattuck was a
mysterious dead end. Before noon, with the
addition of only seven new people into the
A&E Family Forest, she has become a wealth of
exciting new possibilities. She is now connected
to 28 ancestors with what are certain to be many
interesting stories and places behind them.
Surnames of those ancestors include Barnes,
Barron, Cooledge, de Vincent, Hall, Palmer,
Randall, Shattuck, Sherman, and Winship.
I wonder to how many exciting places and
stories those new dead ends will soon lead?
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