Sam Dunn

TL;DR -- Having seen a map of North American dated in 1794, this post was imperative. In the map, the interior is mostly unknown. One fact that stood out was Taos, in New Mexico, which attests to the long influence of Spain. We look at some of the developments over the years since then, starting with the Lewis & Clark trek which was funded by the administration of President Thomas Jefferson. 

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We have many posts dealing the the carving of the interior of the U.S. during the frontier century starting with Jedediah Strong Smith's journeys through the west, looking at Judge Thompson's travels, and considering the changes during the period of the influence of the trapper, the trader, and the rancher as civilization moved continually westward. Plus many other themes with respect to this long period of activity over the whole of the interior. 

Sam Dunn was a London mathematician and mapper who did a series of maps of the world. His abstract look at the New World in 1794 is interesting, for several reasons. There was not much knowledge about the interior except for personal knowledge by the trappers until the official look by Lewis&Clark which was ordered by Prez Jefferson in 1804. 

North America, 1794

This map illustrates several points. For one, the view is not bad considering the input which would have been scribbled maps and text. Our abstraction ability allows this talent to shine. And, it is pertinent today due to technology's introduction of the computer. More on that through time. Another point is that the interior of this view did not account for the mountains that range top to bottom. Mountains? Yes, lots and lots. Colorado has many over 14K feet. Also, the River of the West was a nice hypothesis that didn't pan out. 

Lots to look at, over time. In terms of rivers, the Arkansas is there. The Missouri is truncated. We see the Rio Grande and the Colorado mentioned, albeit some corrections are necessary. However, notice Taos is located somewhat correctly, so we do see Spanish influence. And, France's northern information is there. The big unknown? The U.S. and its west. That was an era and location still pending. 

 

Remarks: Modified: 12/10/2021

11/09/2021 -- U.S. History. The first few years. 

12/10/2021 -- U.S. Interior (prior to carving). 

Lucy Foster (Wilson) Gardner

TL;DR -- As we look at generations, we will split them by the 250th which is an important event. Lucy Foster Wilson Gardner, and her husband, are of the seventh generation. We have written of Lucy as her family involves all sides of the Witch ordeal. Too, they have interesting stories with respect to the War of Independence. Then, we have updated her WikiTree profile. 

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Recently, while sorting old material, Ann's brother, Jonathan B. Gardner, found a portrait of Lucy Foster Wilson. The dimensions are 12 1/4 by 10 inches without the framing which had deteriorated.  Lucy was two generations post the U.S. Revolution whose 250th celebration is coming up soon. 

This is a photo of the portrait; the rest of this post is about Lucy and her generation. 

Lucy F. Wilson
ca. 1840s

We wrote of Lucy's family in Vol 34, No 3 of The Essex Genealogist and included an Ahnentafel. The title of the article was "Trials of the Wilson Family" which is summarized in a blog post (Andover Ordeal, 28 Apr 2014). Lucy was of many families who endured (or loved) the Witch ordeal, such as Samuel Wardwell and Mary Ayers Parker (both hanged on 22 Sep 1692 - Salem Village, where else?). 

Lucy's father was Jonathan Wilson. Her mother was Prudence Goldthwait. Both of these were children of SAR/DAR Patriots. Jonathan Wilson was buried at the Howard Street Burial Ground which we wrote about (18 Feb 2020). Prudence is kin to Ezekiel Golthwait who irritated, it is said, John Adams when he (Ezekiel) beat Samuel Adams (kin of John) in an election with a vote margin of two to one. 

Ah, the stories awaiting to be told, especially the time of the Revolution. But, those are for later. 

Right now, let's add Lucy Foster Wilson and her husband, Benjamin Brown Gardner, to the Seventh Generation. We are looking more closely at generations. There are different views: by calendar, by the biological events (parent-child), by some type of impetus that gets attention, and, no doubt, by other means. 

Dr. Frank's 1907 book assigned #188 to Jonathan Gardner, Benjamin's father (pg 283).  #345 Benjamin Brown Gardner was the 2nd child. The following image provides a list of New England ancestors of Lucy. 

According to the WikiTree data, Benjamin Brown Gardner was of the sixth generation. However, his birth year and that of Lucy Foster Wilson puts them in the seventh. So, we will work out a good way to handle this. One distinguishing feature of the seventh is being a grandchild of a Patriot. 

Benjamin Brown Gardner died early (details of death pending) which left Lucy for almost two decades as a widow. 

Remarks: Modified: 09/09/2025

09/09/2025 --  Lucy descends from Elizabeth (Cooke) Walton who descends from Edward III of England.  

"Generations" and its use

TL;DR - An article in The New Yorker on recent generations motives a look at the dozen or so generations since John Winthrop's arrival. We have had several posts on generations and find the divisions to be of use. 30 years or 25 years? The graphic shows 30 years. With our database, we will be able to see how much of a range there is similar to the Mayflower data that showed the long span of their fifth generation. 

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Meaning, of course, that the use of generation is arbitrary. A classical value was 30 years for a long time. We sort of stumbled on 25 years for various reasons. 

In a recent New Yorker, Louis Menand of Harvard reviewed a couple of books on the subject. His article was titled, It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations” , and covers some interesting points. Louis is a Professor of English. He was at Harvard Law before going over to Columbia for his Ph.D. His mother wrote a biography of Samuel Adams, so we will look at him further. 

With respect to the reviews, his graphic is an eye-catcher, showing the last four generations as we see in the press: Boomer, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z. Each of these four is considered to be about 15 years. Louis argues that these are very arbitrary giving not much more information than one finds with astrology. However, generations do make sense. In the graphics, we have a 30-year generational look that shows the Boomers to be in the 12th generation which is about right as looking back at Thomas Gardner and Margaret Fryer that is how many lines get filled in, say for an application to a heritage society. 

This post wanted to bring in motivations for looking more closely at generations. Too, this will be a regular type of study and report. We have had many posts so far on generational themes. Here are a few. 

• Fifth generation - From July of 2020 when we were diving into the databases of SAR/DAR as well as looking at the particular families who were associated with events. The 5th bearing the brunt? Lots and lots to look at there. 
• Hundred years - From June of 2020 as we got to looking at a spectral approach. Going backward from now: 100th (Dr. Frank's time), 200th (western expansion), 250th (Revolution), 300th (not long after the Witch fiasco, 400th (Weymouth next year, then Gloucester, then rolling on). 
• America's Lost Generation - From November of 2020 when we realized by looking at families as we helped people with their applications that lots and lots of problems arise when people move several hundreds of miles away to someplace without infrastructure. Then, genealogists, in their antiquated logic, blame some brick wall when it's their thinking on the issue. Lots to discuss. If Lyman Porter is a sore spot, so be it. The recent database has him, a daughter, and brothers. Database? Yeap, from MF applications that were accepted. 

The frontier century was over 100 years long and potentially spans from three to five generations. We will be looking at that. 

Remarks: Modified: 01/08/2023

11/02/2021 --  Updated the graphic. 

11/03/2021 -- Lucy F. (Wilson) Gardner is of the seventh (or sixth) generation.  

01/08/2023 -- We had another icon (Charles Thomson) come up for our 250th (1774, Continental Congress) and 400th (Cape Ann as one of the first of the capitalization attempts of history). 

How dumb is AI?

TL;DR -- The title may be self-explanatory. Hype has reigned for a while now. Let's correct that. 

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This is the 2nd post of a series and looks at some articles from the recent IEEE Spectrum. First, what is the IEEE? It's the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers, now known by its acronym, which is over 100 years old. An old motto reminded everyone that for all of the technology events of the 20th century, some member of the IEEE was there. That is due to the pervasive influence of power generation and management. With the computer, the tie is even stronger. 

So, the IEEE has had its ups and downs, as does any groups of humans. But, their collection of articles in the Spectrum of October of 2021 was phenomenally on the mark. We will pick a few articles for this post but will look at all of them eventually in our technology focus. The image on the right is from their cover showing a robot (nicely configured) and the headline: Why is AI so dumb? 

Now, AI has been around for more than 1/2 of a century and was almost named as a lark by John McCarthy. It is famous for having generated lots of interest during its life in a cycle of boom and bust. We are currently in a boom where AI is all over. Companies are piling on the heap of people trying to use. We see some success. 

Mostly, though, we can say that it's far from expectation's ideal in terms of real modes of gain. Hence, the interest of the TGS, Inc. Every group needs some focus. We are taking technology in the perspective of people with 400 years of history under their belt. We have already started to look at these long threads of cultural experience and discussing how we need such in today's world. Expect that effort to continue. 

In particular, we can look at historic fact. Genealogists have used the computer from the beginning. Then, we saw the genetic analysis project gain footing and ground. On the other hand, there are many open questions yet unanswered. In fact, they have not even been asked. When you see commercial outfits piling on something, watch out. AI is like that; so, too, can be genealogy efforts; as well, we can look at the whole of the industry, given enough time. 

But, back to the Spectrum. There were several articles, such as the one looking at AI history. There we see that two views predominated: symbolic and connectionist. Of late, the press has favored the latter which got out of bed finally due to increases in computational prowess. We worked in this, hence the interest. Prior to that, the symbolic approach made some headway. IEEE had a brief history. There are more in-depth looks that we can purview. Specifically, the most recent work has been on tying these two approaches together. That is, as smart people have always done, the work will continue, in the spotlight or out of it. 

Unfortunately, the spotlight perturbs things greatly. One might think that turning the damn thing off is how to go, except for those who want to act and play reality rather than do hard science and engineering. So, in that guise, lets look at three of the articles. 

• An Inconvenient Truth About AI - IEEE calls this the third wave. In each one, the advances were noticeable. This time, we saw the AI win games thought to be too difficult for computers. Everywhere almost, we see AI systems handling customer queries for better or for worse. There are other examples of the good and the bad. Briefly, this technology is not ready for big-time replacement of humans and their talents. So, why the hype? This will need discussion. 
• 7 Revealing Ways AIs Fail - Some of the attributes are discussed, such as brittleness, inherent bias, lack of common sense, and failure to handle mathematics as we would expect. In this latest round, huge stacks of data that came from the computer's existence allowed a focus on AI training itself. Some success got people to thinking of autonomous modes which did not really pan out as expected. But, typical to human endeavors, it took a while for the realizations to hit home. We all know the little engine that could. Just how little is the AI engine? Pun. 
• Deep Learning's Diminishing Returns - One ignored factor has been that these new approaches are expensive in several ways. There is the hardware and then the energy. Then, there was the complexity that was latent. Scaling up is not an option. This AI thrust was leveraged by the general economic boost of the past decade. Profligate ways of business became almost the vogue which is not sustainable. As problems of the technology got more visible, the costs and their issues got attention. So, there is 'deep' here; the whole thing is in a morass with no real plan for extrication. The business and social aspects of AI will be an interesting bit of study. Even magic has its price. 

How does this topic relate to the TGS, Inc.? Technology, going forward, will be only more complicated and with troublesome ramifications on people. The U.S.? Has led in technology for a long while. Too, technology involves people across the board. Now, our interest can and will be several. Consider though, the U.S. history over the past 400 years has some meaning and significance, in terms of technology and society. This post looks at one topic of very many from a viewpoint that is not very well known publicly. There is a lack of places to go to find proper information. This is a general problem whose severity is only now becoming known. But, these issues could have been foreseen. Were. Again, our focus is going forward in a mode that lift people out of the various mires, some of which are historic in scope, others are being created every day, some times by technological errors. 

As an aside, something needing attention deals with truth and what it is. We will help with this discussion, especially from a position that takes note of the need for truth engineering. Technology is core to the issues of truth, though the issues have been in human culture for as long as we can recall. The smaller world created by technology is more of an exacerbating influence than that of any type of mitigation.  

Remarks: Modified: 12/03/2021

10/30/2021 -- Add the TL;DR.  

12/03/2021 -- After some research, this seems in order. Will use this to set a basis: Practical issues of AI. 

Cape Ann to Patriot

TL;DR -- The Mayflower group has a database that identifies the passenger who arrived in 1620 that was the ancestor for a Patriot (SAR/DAR) whose descendants have applied for membership. At the same time, the Mayflower has a published database of applications that were successful and were dated before 1900. That gave us a chance to raise the issues of Lyman Porter, again, who is in the database as is one of his offspring and his brothers. Not to beat a dead horse, we then mention that we are working similarly with a focus on the Cape Ann entrants whose arrival will be celebrated in a mere one year and two months. 

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This post is the 1st of a series about technology a lot of which has to do with computing. The pace of change has accelerated since the PC came on the scene in ways that are obvious. You know, there was progress before then which is embedded in the current modes if you know where to look. So, advances always come from prior work. One motivation for this series was to look at AI through the eyes of the IEEE Spectrum. We'll do that in the next post. 

For starters, lets look at a couple examples of late. The Mayflower group recently announced their new database which one can title Passenger to Patriot. That is, Patriots that are defined by DAR/SAR applications are linked back to their relations on the Mayflower. We, actually, have been doing that with the Cape Ann crowd. Whenever we see some who seems to have New England links, we follow those back. In doing so, many times, we get to a family who came early into Essex County of Massachusetts. And, we document the finding to an extent as well as push them on our research stack. 

Lyman Porter, Record

Now the other thing to note is that the Mayflower applications can be accessed on-line now. That is, those applications that were prior to 1900. A query will return information from Family Search who is sponsoring the query and which will show the line from the Passenger to the person used in the query. So, on doing a search, Lyman Porter is there, as is his daughter and some of his brothers. We will get back to this topic. Also, we will look further at the Mayflower Descendants database. 

Aside: The two ladies about whom our Alden post was done were in their 90s at the time. Both now? Deceased. But, they know. 

Needless to say, links from the databases of New England to those related to DAR/SAR work would be very helpful to researchers. All of us who have been around a while have seen several generations of approches over the past two and one-half decades. Some of these are still around. Some early ones are even now influencing current work. 

Our portal to truth (https://TGSoc.org) is an example. Our development notes indicate how the effort has paralleled the general progress, in a minimal way. That is one key item to discuss. Too, we have had discussions about content versus configuration which too easily get conflated. In fact, the separation was dropped of late with the mania and approaches that we have seen associated with artificial intelligence (AI). That will be covered in the next post. 

It is comforting to see that those embedded enablers are still there. In fact, some old systems were identified last year due to COVID issues as they needed special attention using talents long gone away. On the other hand, we do need to keep honing systems, albeit we have seen the impact of loss of cultural views and any historical appreciation of why things might have been done the way they were. 

In other words, we learn from history; or, we are supposed to. Computing had just been too new to allow much analysis along that axis. That lack will be recognized in the next few years. How things will play out is not known, understandably. Yet, we can hope for the best in new technology as we stay in tune with progress while, at the same time, giving content the respect that it deserves. 

Postnote: Looks like the NEHGS did the work for the Passenger to Patriot. Nice to see the continuity of the work. 

Remarks: Modified: 04/19/2022

10/30/2021 -- Added the TL;DR.  

11/01/2021 -- Added the postcard from the NEHGS: Pilgrims to Patriots. 

04/19/2022 -- Message for today, from D.A.R. 247 years ago. (requires a login) 

KATY - western railroad

TL;DR -- We have spent a lot of time during the COVID period researching the western expansion with respect to New England involvement. It was post the Revolution and the 1812 ordeal that things got going. Jumping to the latter part of the frontier century, we look at a town in KS that had one of the largest railroad yards in the country. There we consider the times and the people with a focus on one family whose origins were New England and England before that. As well, lots of research is pending with a growing stack of requests. 

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We have been looking at the west of the U.S. which is quite huge and complex. When we mention 'west' we are talking the interior which on the east was bounded by the original colonies' western border (which was a dream, many times, going out to the Rockies or further) and the States of the West Coast. Top to bottom is the view, which would mean the Texas Gulf shore up to the border with Canada. Over the past two years, we have many posts related to this theme dealing with areas all over the place. 

So, as the work continues, we will need to have a map that pinpoints the area with which the content of post deals. Also, the next post will be on technology. The west and technology are two of our recurring themes. In the technology sense, details of configuration, many times, can outweigh content. In the internet age, there is a waffle. Of late? Lots and lots of content is copied. 

Another theme would be generations. We have pointed out that the Revolution (the focus of SAR/DAR) was of the fifth generation with the fourth and sixth there. Or the sixth was born in the latter stages of the long war which was shortly followed by the turmoil of 1812. In any case, things settled so that subsequent generations covered the interior with a seemingly unlimited amount of newcomers came on the scene. 

Parsons, KS 1909
photo of postcard
courtesy of Chris Cruz via
You know you are from Parsons when ...
(private FB group)

Anything different than now?

So, a couple of days ago, we saw a photo that was from 1909 and showed a town in southeastern Kansas. A few things stood out. There were a few horseless carriages, but there were lots of carriages. The road was not paved. The town looked western. We will look at one building in the foreground, but the horizon shows a large building and the railroad track sign (cross). This is the photo which is a bird's eye view of old.  

Let's look at the large building first. It was the train station for KATY Railroad (Missouri-Kansas-Texas). Not long after this photo, the building burned down to be superseded by building that lasted until the 1980s. At this time, Parsons was one of the three largest railroad facilities in the U.S. The other two were Los Angeles, CA and Kansas City, which is a Bi-State affair. In the area where we see the railroad crossing on Main Street, the city put in an underpass. A little later, this street had an electric tram running on rails. 

Of interest, too, is that Parsons had a huge rail yard with facilities for repair. Tools for the railroad are huge affairs. Yet, this work was being done prior to the assists by hydraulics. So, technology? Yes, we do have that as a theme from an integrative sense with looks at historical aspects with respect to demands, or causes, for change as well as the issues related to research, development and maintenance, as well as use. 

As an aside, from Wichita, KS which is west of this area, plane builder, Boeing, shipped fuselages by rail to the west coast. The lonely train out in the huge west is almost an iconic scene. As well as the robberies which are one of the features of a lot of westerns. Some fuselage shipping, later, had to be flown in converted planes due to size. So, we do have a hardware focus; expect to hear about and discuss software, too, especially that which now gets lot of attention.  

We mentioned the size of the railroad building. This little town was a major point of transfer. That is, both of goods and passengers. There was a roundabout which was needed back in those days. One sees such with SFO's trolley system. People used to get off and help turn the little thing. 

KATY lines

Another context? Another part of the theme is people and material movement across this wide expanse. We looked at the (stage) coach traffic from St. Louis, MO to San Francisco, CA and provided details about the trip which dipped down into Texas, went across the southern border, and then back up north from LAX to SFO (using the modern parlance). You see, this little post is a continuing look at technology which we can do using the historical modes of the U.S. Before switching gears, let's look at a map of the KATY which is the heavy line. It carried goods and people from the Gulf coast of TX to St. Louis, MO and Omaha, NB and places in-between. 

This is only one example of rail traffic out west. A couple of years ago, while looking at a family history, we saw that one of Ann's uncles was involved in getting a rail line established between Boston and Salem as well as having a similar focus in FL. This was about the same time as the development of the KATY. BTW, John's family was railroad focused, to boot. 

So, let's look at people a little. In this photo, there is a building that has the name, Holcomb. That caught our eye since it is a collateral family. Was this kin? As we have made a point of marking further research needed to identify individuals, many of whom turn out to be kin (examples below). Turns out that the initials are D. H. Before looking at D. H., let's look at technology's future. 

We see this already with apps and such. But, there will be more structure, at some point, so that we have persistence, consistently, through time. On Wikipedia, most locations will have a section that is titled "Notable people" or "From there" or something or other. In the case of Parsons, several names stood out, as well as Holcomb who is not mentioned. Here are a few.  

• William Coffin Coleman - We called him the American tinkerer earlier. We knew that his family had been in southeast Kansas after being in the South. But, his parents were of NY and were on the border with MA. The name Coffin and Coleman? Brings New England to mind, so we have this on our research stack. 
• George Pepperdine - The University? Yes. But, he also started Western Auto. 
• T. Claude Ryan - Aviation enthusiast and entrepreneur. Built the Spirit of St. Louis. 

Based upon our research, we could do this type of thing for any of the locales in the West of the U.S. We already have started with some (say, Grizzly Adams). Technology will help make this more interesting. How many types of media will we have? 

To lift things, we will use Harvard's 400 years to tell stories of the U.S., to boot. 

Now, back to D. H. Holcomb. He is the ninth generation from an immigrant who was an early settler of Windsor, CT. This family put their book (Our Banyan Tree) on the web. David Holcombe (#23766) was born in Ohio in 1850. The family moved further west to IL. The KS Census of 1925 shows that David and his wife had been born in IL. Also, it has his interests to be Real Estate and Insurance which might indicate that he owned the building that had a grocery. David and his wife are in KS according to the 1900, 1910, and 1920 U.S. Census records. 

His great-grandfather, Dr. Jonathan Holcombe, was a Patriot, a young fifer (WikiTree, SAR which points to DAR). And, his daughter, Jesse Holcomb, grew up in Kansas, went to KU, and more (see her bio at Genealogy Trails). She said that his name was David Hartley Holcomb. 

This is cursory as lots more can be researched and written. It is remarkable that we can rely on advances over the past decade to tell fully aspects of stories. Who needs paper? However, having said that, structure is important. We do not live in chaos, ever. For the TGS, Inc., we want to engage in the full coverage related to us and the U.S. and history and more. At the same time, technology requires continual attention. Various aspects of the need are more recognized than others. 'That work is necessary' is a given. 'What work?' is part of the discussions to be had. 

Detailed map
at KU

Remarks: Modified: 01/05/2023

10/28/2021 -- Added a few links. 

12/18/2021 -- 1884 map of Labette County showing the railroads going through Parsons, KS. Besides the KATY, these were the following; 

• Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis Railway - predecessor of the next one.  
• St. Louis - San Francisco Railway (FRISCO) - now part of the Burlington Northern Railroad. 
• Parsons and Pacific Railroad. 

04/20/2022 -- Added link to the image at KU. 

04/22/2022 -- Added attribution to the 1909 Postcard: courtesy of Chris Cruz via You know you are from Parsons when ... private FB group 

01/05/2023 -- Added link to KDOT map (PDF) that provides historical notes (see 19th Century details). 

Click for detailed 
map from KDOT

In the building owned by Holcomb, there is a sign for Hubbard & Lott. We can research this further, but they did get a mention in The Publisher's Weekly on 23 Sept 1905. 

12/05/2025 -- Parsons was selected to be the site of a prototype reactor: Nuclear Company Deep Fission Announces Site for Department of Energy Pilot at Great Plains Industrial Park in Kansas. 

Research markers

TL;DR -- The influence of New England on the U.S. and the world never ceases. We try to cover these as they are found and as we learn how it relates to the families of Cape Ann. We are a mere two months from 2022 which will have Weymouth stepping up to an acknowledgement of its history and the pedigree of its people. 

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This post pulls together information on three disparate but pertinent topics. They relate to recent work and will be discussed further as we proceed. 

The first two were seen while browsing Facebook which is where we have our expanded index of activity. 

• Ties to New England - This story appeared in a Cape Code periodical and is about a Harwich resident learning about his heritage. He is 3/4 Chinese but has English ancestors. Among the families are Bradford, Blaisdell, Vassall, and more. He is a member of the new group, Descendants of Cape Code and the Island so we expect to be able to learn more in the context of how families intermingle, in particular with respect to the long reach of New England. 

• 

  French Baron who almost drove the English from Maine - We already mentioned New Hampshire of late as a focus for research. But, as expected, Maine comes into play. There is a group with the name The First Families of Maine that meets regularly about area and its peoples. As we know, Maine was part of Massachusetts, for a while. A major work looked at the History and Genealogy of New Hampshire and Maine. However, with respect to New France, that is on our topics.  
  

This next article was seen on Quora. In it, the author looks at AI now and into the future. We have mentioned that thrust as being of importance to our work, as well. 

• Transdisciplinary artificial intelligence - Putting this here as a placeholder. This brief look is worth a quick read as the summary is good, and the discussion about the future is very much apropos to the times. 
  

As mentioned before, Weymouth is up for notice in 2022. Then, Essex County and Gloucester follow in 2023. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/11/2021

10/30/2021 -- Added the TL;DR. 

12/11/2021 --  Ties to Harvard.