Gerbera Daisy

Errands with Auntie...the title of my new book.  No not really. ;)
But that's what we did today.  Her teeth are clean and she has her Rx and fresh veggies from the produce place we like to go to.  What more could you ask for?

How about another interesting story from my family tree? Go on, have a go at this one.  :)

 My 12th great grandfather was Thomas Scudder.  He and his wife, my 12th g grandmother, Elizabeth, emigrated from Kent, England to Salem, Massachusetts in June of 1635...380 years ago this month.  Wow, I just amazed myself by seeing that date.  Anyway, they packed up the six children and sailed across 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean in the ship James.  And you think taking your family on vacation for two weeks is rough!  I bet they had more than one seasick child on that little cruise.  Yikes.   They settled in Salem, which was part of the Massachusetts Bay Company's royal charter to plant a colony in New England as a refuge for English Puritans increasingly threatened because of their religious practices.  The Pilgrims came in 1620 with barely 500 settlers trickling in after 8 years.  In 1628, with the founding of Salem, the floodgates opened.  King Charles became a Royal Pain and some 80,000 English families made a run for the border and 21,000 settled in New England.  My Scudder family was part of the exodus.  Thomas and Elizabeth raised their kids there, and both died in Salem.  But their kids decided to move on from there when they reached adulthood, and my ancestor ended up on Long Island.  They escaped the insanity that went on in Salem that occured in the late 1600's when innocent men and women were accused, tried and executed for witchcraft.  One of them was Susanna North Martin, who was my stepmom's 8th great grandmother.
(The Pilgrims and the Puritans were not the same, by the way.)

And probably, somebody out there in Blipland, reading this, might have the exact same ancestors.  Maybe it's you!

Thanks to: The Maiden family of Virginia and allied families, 1623-1991