Kin and Konnections: A Family History Blog

Recently, I saw a segment about Ingersoll wristwatches circa World War I on the PBS television program Antiques Roadshow . It triggered a flashback to my mother telling me that we’re related to the Ingersoll watch family. At the time, images of Bavarian forefathers living deep in the forest and building cuckoo clocks swirled in my head. Before family lore starts spinning out of control, let’s explore the real story. I can trace at least two family lines, the Bryants of Reading, Massachusetts and the Ingersolls of Long Island, New York to early colonial America, through my great-grandfather, Jerome Calvin Bryant. Jerome and his mother, Mary Ellen Ingersoll, are listed on page 494 of A Genealogy of the Ingersoll Family in America 1629-1925 , by Lillian Drake Avery (click here to view a digital version of the book at FamilySearch). Mary Ellen (Henry Jackson 6 , Henry 5 , Ezra 4 , Josiah 3 , John 2 ,John 1 ) was the seventh generation from the immigrant ancestor born in England, Joh...

Researching my family history has changed so much since I started in 2000.  Then, I had a frustratingly slow dial-up connection.  I mostly surfed and posted on message boards.  I spent my lunch breaks in the bowels of the Los Angeles Central Library.  I remember stumbling upon my Burwell ancestors in the DAR lineage books.  I was excited when I found the biography of John H. Bryant, linking my Illinois Bryants to Massachusetts, and eventually, my immigrant ancestor, Abraham Bryant of Reading.  Even more rewarding, was piecing together the clues from city directories to my long-lost uncle and reconnecting the family after over 50 years. Many of those same resources I used back then are now available online.  Increasingly, you can access them for free. Today, I started with a short article on the remarriage of Moses T. Burwell, Jr. to Ada (Smith) Burwell on December 10, 1904, in Kansas City, Missouri.  [The article was published in the Col...