Category Archives: Family Lines

Cannon – Surname Saturday

Where did the Cannon name come from—and was Martha Cannon’s mother really a Rolfe? This Surname Saturday traces Martha Cannon Pankey (c.1764–1818) through colonial Goochland and Cumberland County, Virginia, untangling name origins, land patents, and an unconfirmed maternal mystery. Continue reading

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Gideon Howell Reveals His Brother’s Secret: The Parents of Peter M. Howell

Howell Ancestry LineWho were Peter M. Howell’s parents?By Don Taylor Peter M. Howell (1805–1865) was a well-documented figure in my wife’s ancestry — a colorful itinerant preacher whose memoir, The Life and Travels of Peter Howell, never once names his … Continue reading

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Ancestor Sketch – Johann Jakob Huber (1850–1926)

For eleven years, Johann Jakob Huber stood behind an impenetrable brick wall. A single page from the Bürger-Familienregister der Kirchgemeinde Stadel has shattered it. Now we know he was born 5 February 1850 in Pfündlauf, Zürich — a farmer, a father of seven, and the man who kept all but one child from leaving Switzerland. Continue reading

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Amanda Taft Whitney (1798–1872): An Ancestor Sketch

Born in Massachusetts in 1798 and carried west as an infant by her migrating family, Amanda Taft Whitney spent her life in Broome County, New York — raising ten children and outliving most of her generation. Her story is unusually well-documented. Read on to meet a woman the census records refused to forget. Continue reading

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Ancestor Sketch – Anna Maria Dürst (1770–1858)

Anna Maria Dürst was born in 1770 in Diesbach, Glarus, Switzerland — a mountain canton that would shape her world for nearly nine decades. She married Bernhard Trümpi in 1806 and raised a family in Ennetbühls. If Patrick Wild’s research holds, her ancestry may trace all the way back to Charlemagne. Continue reading

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