Saturday, July 9, 2022

1900 forward

TL;DR -- As we head to the 400th of Gloucester, MA which will start at the end of December of this year, we can pull things together to start our next phase. We have several memes to discuss, but a continuing theme deals with generations. In 2020, we noted that the 5th generation work of a Mayflower descendant helps bring out some of the common issues through time (hence, modulo is very much apropos). 

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Back in 2020, with Covid and other factors at work, we had a lot of time to do work dealing with generations as mentioned in our last post: 8th generation. It was in the work where we started to list generations from Cape Ann to events of U.S. History. And, the 5th generation was identified as the most involved of the U.S. Revolution which 250th is coming up. The 8th generation post came from looking in more detail at what we knew of Judge F.M. Thompson. F.M. was Civil War time. 


Another post of the time was 1900 back. In that post, we looked at Dr. Frank mentioning his father, Stephen Wilson Gardner, in his book. Stephen's father, Benjamin Brown Gardner, was the grandson of Simon Stacey Gardner, DAR Patriot, and of the 5th generation. That would make Benjamin to be the 7th generation, Stephen to be the 8th and Dr. Frank would be of the 9th (as is Ann's grandfather). Stephen, then, would be the cohort of F.M. (of the last post). 

Also, that allow us to establish some relations with what we know. Namely, this would be the two massive affairs driven by technology, somewhat: WWI and WWI. And, we get to Dr. Frank's generation and their WWI draft registrations. Too, back to Harvard, and its chemist involved with chemical warfare; he, kin, was a President of Harvard, later (James Bryant Conant was of the 9th gen). That establishes the parents of the boomers to be the 10th generation. 

Now, why all of this? One major meme deals with the 1960s where dynamics all over the world erupted in ways not seen before; those energies persisted in their ways until this very day where we have no seeming platform left in any of the classical senses; except, we do have an emerging focus that is related to technology having reared its head in the last decade and one-half, namely computational emptiness. 

As we saw with the New Yorker overview, there are different ways to look at generations. We will categorize and do simultaneous looks as technology allows us to do. But, the spread through time, almost modulo perfect can make a lot of sense. This graphics uses the four generations that the New Yorker article touched upon. Yes, the contents of graphic is taken from the periodical.  

Just like we can track through Harvard's footprints on history, we can do the same thing with people (families) and with the imprint of technology. Our work of late showed us that there are several places where information gaps occurred. Post the Revolution, we had several generations, centered around the 7th, where descendants of early families seemed to have dropped off the earth. 

At the same time, newer families were arriving, constantly. Many times, with the same or similar names so as to create confounding moments. We will look at that further but, for now want to just identify that there is a major lost generation. Fortunately, many times we can tie together sufficient information to build back family relationships or to give someone a little recognition. There are many cases of the unidentified across the landscape. 

In particular, our next post will identify a few Gardner generations around the 1900 timeline. We picked that for privacy purposes where most things before then could become public knowledge if it had not already been lifted to view. However, looking this way from then, the release of the 1950 U.S. Census data does open several doors. 

Before proceeding, using F.M. as an example, we want to document some threads of families with the name of Gardner and folks of collateral families. 

Too, the upcoming 250th is important for many reasons. So, we will support DAR and SAR and others. Then, we will map families from Cape Ann to the Patriot and to now, as do several organizations. At the same time, we have some open business with regard to the Mayflower event which has a similar project of Passenger to Patriot. For us, we can use the Five Generations work for these comparative studies. As a reminder, we will venture into New Spain (first due to size) and New France as we work.  

Remarks: Modified: 07/09/2022

07/09/2022 -- 

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