Sunday, April 24, 2011

Mission and method

This post is a little belated, however better late than never.

Mission -- Tell the story of Thomas and Margaret and their offspring. As well, elevate the awareness of those who contributed, especially those to whom history gives little attention.

See Thomas Gardner Society site: purpose.

As Henry Williams Elson wrote: "The Pilgrims of 1620 were men of great zeal, but of little knowledge; many of the Puritans of 1630, however, were men of education and fortune, members of Parliament, or clergymen of the most liberal education."   History of the United States, 1904

Links -- posts will link back to this blog in order to have a bi-directional flow. Links to other sites can degrade, decay, and such. For instance, at rootsweb, a page can change due to indexing which then alters when there is an update. Perhaps, an image capture might help, until we get our own database in place.

Method -- In regard to the blog, posts are usually be done in 3 stages: initial draft, then links to on-line supporting material, finally editing to remove any troublesome-ness.

All edits, after the initial date, will be marked by a datestamp.

Aside: the initial draft, and edit, is done the old-fashioned way, without a fancy on-line editor. Except for some minor spell-checking, refinement comes from successive eye-balling (which can be problematic - has anyone counted the number of passes needed to remove minor issues from text?) and modifications. Hence, a little patience is requested from the reader; a gestalt-based type of, as if listening to a, reading is what works. Eventually, the errors will diminish, grammar will converge to something more permanent, but meaning is always intended to be more clear than not.

Since posts develop on-line through drafts toward a final version, an ellipsis (...) will indicate further work is on-going for the early stages. Absence of ... implies a sort of completion.

Additional material can be found under Remarks which will be on-going additions. There will be an effort to keep bi-directional links. Occasionally, a post will recap some theme and will include material from earlier posts.

Remarks:

04/19/2021 -- Add icon for use by portal listing. 

04/02/2016 -- There was a pointer to the original site (MS reneged - long story): http://thomasgardnersociety.org/html/aboutus.html. On the method, see the Profile.

12/31/2011 -- see Wishlist under Profile (or this). Funny thing about being a touch-typist: many times there is a slip (which I call Jungian) where the keys thought of in (and expressed through) the nervous system (you know, it includes the brain) differ. Yes. And, watching what is in the head more than what is on the screen allows the word to not be noticed. If the secondary, and tertiary, editing steps are by-passed (all sorts of reasons for this), the mangled text will be there until later noticed and corrected. A resolution for 2012 will be to not just alter the text but to insert the correction with square brackets []. After some time to allow a collection of these, an interesting bit of analysis might be in order.


Modified: 04/02/2016

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Lucretia (Coffin) Mott

Thomas' descendants list contains many social reformers. Lucretia (Coffin) Mott stands out for her activism activities, such as co-founding the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society and the American Equal Rights Association.

She spoke at the International Anti-Slavery Convention that was held in London, England in 1840. She, along with other women attendees such as Baroness Byron, was included in the commemorative painting of the convention.
 Lucretia (Coffin) Mott
 Ancestory Archives

Lucretia was a descendant of Thomas and Margaret through son Richard. Both of her parents (Thomas Coffin and Anna Folger) were from families who arrived early to New England. She grew up on Nantucket Island and then attended a Quaker School in New York (Nine Partners Meeting House and Cemetery). After graduating, she also taught at the school which is where she met her husband (James Mott).

Lucretia, in 1864, helped found Swarthmore College.

Remarks:

02/16/2019 -- Lucretia's family leased land to the government to establish a military training ground: Camp William Penn.

12/14/2018 -- Added image from Ancestory Archives.

07/19/2015 -- A Swarthmore alumni: James A. Michener.

01/07/2014 -- Thanks to Melissa Berry for using this on anceSTORY archives.

01/07/2014 -- Removed the tree pointers (see rationale).

02/01/2013 -- Update rootsweb references for Larson tree.

03/07/2012 -- Updated links to George Larson, II's work (internal pointers changed due to a database update -- one problem with the current link method, since it is dependent upon the structure of the tree).

07/21/2011 -- More on Nantucket.

Modified: 02/16/2019

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Whaling Gardners

Last time, we looked at Ebenezer who moved from Nova Scotia to Maine during the war. Then, we discovered a book on the Maine Gardners.

This time, let's consider some of the families on Nantucket. Recall that we earlier quoted William C. Folger in talking about how family stories abound. One of our tasks is firming up the basis for these in order to carry forward a strong foundation to the future (arguable, of course).

Earlier, I saw a page on Wikipedia about the Whaling Gardners. I did not, at the time, know whether they were related to Thomas and Margaret. Now, I know that they are.
Essex Disaster

I put Gideon Gardner (Thomas, Richard, Richard -- pedigree via Coffin family) on the Descendants list. One goal for the descendants list has been to have a wide collection, and varied to show the expanse, as Thomas' progeny set is very large both in accumulation (across all of the generations) and in count of those who are, concurrently, on the planet and who have Thomas and Margaret among their ancestors.

We could also look at possible interactions between cousins, such as we saw in the post on Lady Franklin Bay expedition. Captain George William Coffin (Thomas, Richard, John) was of the Nantucket family.

Dr.Frank's book lists many mariners. It might be interesting to collect these. For instance, in my readings of the past few days, I saw a reference to John Paul Jones in some situation with which a Gardner was involved. I'll have to find that.

Remarks: Modified: 12/30/2021

07/21/2011 -- More on Nantucket.
12/30/2015 -- The settlers of Nantucket (Donahue family site).
03/19/2021 -- Added photo to use for icon for our portal listing.