Author: Justin Durand

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Notable Kin

The person links below are to FamilySearch. Other links are to sites with additional information.

American Revolution

These men fought to liberate the thirteen original colonies from England between 1775 and 1783.

  1. Capt. Andrew Grant
  2. James Kenney

California Gold Rush

  • William Howe
  • Horse thief

Civil War

Clergy

  1. Rev. Elmer Phillip Howery (?-1921), Methodist minister

Colorado Gold Rush

Colorado Pioneers

  • Gillespie, Left Hand Canyon
  • Oard

Colorful Characters

  1. Frances Mariam “Mamie” (Bair) Tarter, Madam in Big Piney, Wyoming – mother-in-law of great grandfather
  2. Sarah Elizabeth (Luce) Hickman (1828-1909) – 3rd great aunt

Danites

The Danites were a group of Mormon vigilantes.

  • William Adams “Wild Bill” Hickman (1815-1883) – 3rd great uncle
  • Jason Reid Luce – 3rd great uncle
  • John Martin “Matt” Luce – 3rd great uncle
  • Wilford Woodruff Luce – 2nd great grandfather

Gateway Ancestors

Gateway ancestors are colonial immigrants to North America with proven lines to European royalty.

  1. Rose (Stoughton) Otis (1629-1677), descendant of Edward I – 8th great grandmother

Mayflower Passengers

Indian Massacres

Indian Wars

  1. Jason Luce – 2nd great uncle

Religious Leaders

Musicians

Politicians

  1. Leikny Øgrim (1953- ), Norwegian feminist
  2. Ruth Bernhardina (Øgrim) Bull (1911-2005), wife of Brynjulf Friis Bull (1906-1933), Mayor of Oslo – 2nd cousin 1x removed
  3. Tron Øgrim (1947-2007), one of the founders of the Norwegian Workers’ Communist Party – 3rd cousin

Royalty and Nobility

  1. Edward III, King of England

Salem Witch Trials

These are accusers and participants of the Salem Witch Trials, which occurred in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Rampant paranoia ensued in the 1690s when young girls accused others of performing witchcraft. Many of the accused were hanged in one of the darkest periods of human history.

Salvation Army

Scottish Prisoners of War

These Scottish men were captured by the English and deported to the British colonies in North America. The Battles of Durham (1650) and Worcester (1651) were battles of the Scottish Covenanters against the English under Oliver Cromwell. Their descendants organized the Scottish Prisoners of War Society. The Battle of Culloden in 1746 ended the Jacobite resistance to the Hanoverian dynasty.

  • Peter Grant (c1632-1709/12), deported to Maine after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650
  • William Shaw (c1720-aft 1777), deported to Virginia in 1746 after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 – xth great grandfather
  • John Sinclair (c1634-bef 1700), deported to Maine after the Battle of Dunbar in 1651

South Pass Gold Rush

These people came to South Pass, Wyoming after the discovery of gold there in 1867. Bill Hickman was skirmishing with the U.S. Army near Ft. Bridger, but his diary shows he and a band of his boys were at South Pass.

Territorial Pioneers

These people lived in territories of the United States prior to statehood.

  1. Gillespie
  2. Denver Howes, Montana Howes

Town Founders

  • Col. Henry B. Gillespie (1847-1903), father of Aspen, Colorado – 1st cousin 4x removed
  • Jacob Howry, founder of Howrytown, Virginia

United Empire Loyalists

  • Walliser

Utah Pioneers

These people were Utah pioneers (before the coming of the railroad in 1869). See Mormon Pioneer Database for additional details.

  1. Malatiah Luce, arrived in 1848, pioneer of Salt Lake City – 4th great grandfather
  2. Mary Ann (Wheeler) Luce, arrived in 1848, pioneer of Salt Lake City – 3rd great grandmother
  3. Ruth (Grant) Luce (1775- ), arrived in 1848, pioneer of Salt Lake City and Ogden – 4th great grandmother
  4. Stephen Luce, arrived in 1848, pioneer of Salt Lake City – 3rd great grandmother
  5. James Pace
  6. Annie (Quarmby) Luce, arrived in 1847, pioneer of Salt Lake City – 2nd great grandmother
  7. Ira Samuel Sutton (1809-1894), pioneer of Green River

Utah War of 1858

These men served in the Nauvoo Militia, attempting to prevent the annexation of Deseret by the United States.

  • Stephen Luce – 3rd great grandfather

Wild West

  1. William Adams “Wild Bill” Hickman (1815-1883) – 3rd great uncle
  2. Sarah Elizabeth (Luce) Hickman (1828-1909) – 3rd great aunt
  3. Wilford Woodruff Luce
  4. Wilford Woodruff Luce, Jr.
  5. James Pace

Wyoming Pioneers

  1. Wilford Woodruff Luce, Jr. (1864-1948), rancher – great grandfather

Disproven and Doubtful Connections

  1. Josephine de Beauharnais, Empress of the French.
  2. Sven Duwall, Swedish baron. The Wåhlstrand family has a tradition they are descended from an illegitimate son.
  3. Tom Horn, gunslinger.
  4. John Howland, Mayflower passenger.
  5. Frans Ludvig Svanström (c1625-1678), Swedish noble.
  6. Sven (Rospigg) Eketrä (c1562-1626), Swedish noble. He was rumored to be an illegitimate son of Duke Magnus Vasa.
  7. Gustaf I Vasa, King of Sweden.

Other

  1. Jonny Edwards, according to FamilySearch, he is descended from Michel Haché (c1660-1737), of Acadia in French Canada. This Michel is supposed to be son of a “Sauvage Eskimaude (savage Eskimo).

This post is modeled after Chris Ferraiolo’s Notable Relations page at Wikitree

Originally published at Wikitree.com. This article is updated periodically to add new information and to revise links.

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The Search for Thomas Place

When I first began researching my Place ancestors, I concluded Brig. Gen. Solomon Place was our direct ancestor. Cousins had reached the same conclusion; it seemed to be a family tradition.

But years later, it became clear we were mistaken. It was just wishful thinking. And it was easy to demonstrate our mistake with just a little actual research. Our ancestor Thomas Place (1803–1893) of Auburn, New York, was not Solomon’s son. Even so, I doubt I’ll ever convince my cousins. The glamor of having a general in the family is just too much.

The Search

I started my research with very little information. My (step) father Carroll Place was puzzled by my interest. Why would anyone want to know about stuff like that? Anyway, his genealogy was already done. One of his cousins in California was a member of Daughters of the American Revolution (or something like that). Why not just ask her? She would know.

Dad’s own knowledge was patchy. His father was George Washington Place (1889–1958), a dairy farmer in Rock Island, Illinois. Before they came to Rock Island, dad’s ancestors were in Michigan. Further back, he seemed to remember there was a Revolutionary War General, some Mayflower people, and a guy who came from England in Colonial times. Dad didn’t remember any details.

Armed with just this little bit of information, I started my search. In the days before the internet, I scoured libraries, sent letters, and ordered Family Group Sheets from Salt Lake City.

I traced our ancestry to Thomas Place, who moved from Cayuga County, New York, to Huron County, Ohio, in 1833. Thomas sold land to his brother Solomon Place in 1835 and was co-executor of Solomon’s estate in 1845. Then, I hit a brick wall. Before that, nothing solid.

Speculation

It looked like our ancestor the unnamed General might have been Solomon Place (1770-1834). Solomon was the only General I could find anywhere with the surname Place. He served in the War of 1812, not the Revolutionary War, but close enough.

This Solomon was born in 1770 and married Martha Heard in 1796. Our Thomas Place, who we thought could be Solomon’s son, was born in 1803 or 1804 in New York. Thomas’ brother Solomon was born in 1811. The names, dates, and places fit. It’s easy to see how the brothers Thomas and Solomon of Cayuga County, New York could have been sons of Gen. Solomon Place of Washington County, New York.

I didn’t find any direct evidence, but the circumstantial evidence seemed sufficient. I was sure we are descended from Gen. Solomon Place.

That’s where I left it for some 35 years. Over the years, I heard from other researchers who had come to the same conclusion. Some of them claimed to have an explicit family tradition our ancestor Thomas Place was a son of Gen. Solomon Place.

Then, it all fell apart.

Evidence

In 2005, fellow researcher John Folsom contacted me. He pointed to the family Bible record of Solomon Place (New York DAR GRC). No sons named Thomas or Solomon.

Solomon made this record in his own hand and signed it February 10, 1817. He recorded his family in detail. He named his parents, his siblings, his wife Martha, and his children Phebe, Hannah, Harriet, and Hiram.

If Thomas (born 1803/04) and Solomon (born 1811) had been his sons, Solomon would have included them in the 1817 record.

The Bible record is supported by cemetery, will, and probate records.

Solomon’s cemetery plot also contains the remains of his son Hiram (died 1816, age 1 month), (1st) wife Martha (died 1825, age 54); two daughters: Phebe (died 1869, age 73) and Hannah (died 1882, age 84); and grandson Stephen (died 1849, age 22). 

Solomon’s January 1833 will names (2nd) wife Dorothy; daughters Phebe, Hannah, and Harriet, all apparently unmarried; his grandson Stephen Place (son of his unmarried daughter Phebe); and Josiah Barrett, whom he calls a nephew of his first wife.

Conclusion

Armed with the Bible record, probate records, and cemetery records, we now know Thomas Place and his brother Solomon were not sons of Gen. Solomon Place.

Although the evidence is circumstantial, we now believe they were probably sons of Shadrach Place (1778-1840), who came from Washington County, New York to Cleveland, Ohio some time after 1810. If this is the correct connection, Thomas and Solomon were cousins, not sons, of Gen. Solomon Place.

Sources

See Also

Related Posts

Revised Aug. 14, 2025.

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Genealogical Narrative

I read a fun paper last night. Fun because of the way it conceptualizes “genealogy”. For me, method and technique are always more interesting than mere facts.

“Genealogies are not institutions or even families. Genealogies are components of rhetoric about families and, sometimes, about the institutions they lay claim to.”

And, “In the case of genealogical claims to legitimacy, there is no external referent behind either the text or its modern reconstruction. Genealogies are themselves interpretations, a form of rhetoric that serves to persuade others of the legitimacy of a person within a particular family. There are no genealogical facts short of DNA evidence. Even then, the prevalence of adoptions into a families in antiquity and modernity mitigates the social relevance of DNA. In other words, genealogies are always normative claims about identity and legitimacy, not descriptive accounts of some material reality. That observation applies equally to the modern claims about the genealogies of Israel’s priests as it does to the claims of the ancient priests themselves. There is no ancient referent for a genealogical reconstruction except for ancient rhetoric about family identity.”

Fun stuff. This is a common idea in modern academic writing, but this is the first time I’ve seen the phrase “genealogical rhetoric” where I normally expect to see “genealogical narrative”. I wonder if that’s the trend of the future.

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Washington to Odin

Here’s a fun one. Even in the world of fantasy genealogy, some claims stand out.

Every so often we hear the claim George Washington, the first American president, was a male-line descendant of Odin. Of course it’s not true, and of course it’s a fascinating idea.

It all goes back to 1879, when Albert Welles published The pedigree and history of the Washington family: derived from Odin, the founder of Scandinavia, B.C. 70, involving a period of eighteen centuries, and including fifty-five generations, down to General George Washington, first president of the United States. (Yes, really.)

I just found a review by Yvonne Seale–George Washington: A Descendant of Odin? in Public Domain Review (Feb. 8, 2017).

Searles says, “Welles created a family tree for Washington of truly mythical proportions, and one which shows just how useful nineteenth-century Americans found the Middle Ages to be when it came to shaping their understandings of their country’s origins.”

Perhaps one of Welles’ contemporaries said it best. According to Searles, “In a letter to the editor published in a July 1889 issue of The Nation magazine, the genealogist W.H. Whitmore declared that ‘it is only fair to suppose that Mr. Welles was not in a sound state of mind’ when he put pen to paper. The book was a ‘rank and stupid forgery’, ‘a mere rambling collection of useless notes.’

Even so, I’ve met folks who take it seriously. If you’ve ever worked in a shared online family tree, you’re nodding in agreement right now. Amateur genealogy on the Internet is full of this stuff.

But, as Searle says, what’s interesting about Welles’ hodepodge isn’t the claim Washington is descended from Odin. It’s how, from a distance, we see some of the ways our American ancestors tried to ground their identity in continuity with the Old World. “Welles was in a sense extending Euro-American history back into the far past. Rather than a nation which could trace its origins back only a hundred years or so from the time of Welles’ writing, or a continent whose colonization could be traced back to the voyages of an Italian Catholic, Anglo-American Protestants were cast as heirs to a long northern European tradition of exploration, conquest, and colonization.”

And this effort comes even at the cost of bending history into political propaganda. Welles attached “no credence to reports of the Cavalier sentiments of the Washington family”. As Searle says, Welles thought “it was impossible that any ancestor of George Washington could have harbored royalist as opposed to republican sympathies during the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, because no member of the extended Washington clan could ever display a love of ‘power without principle’. The Washingtons were, after all, almost entirely of Germanic descent — untainted by the continental European influences of Norman blood — and throughout the centuries, ‘Saxon opposition to the Norman rule in England took the form of liberalism’.

This is my kind of stuff. Searle’s review worth the read, even if your interest in George Washington and Odin is superficial.

This article has been revised to update the links.

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Luce coats of arms

I’ve been compiling a list of Luce, Lewes, and Lewis coats of arms (and crests) in hopes we might find a clue to the origin of Henry Luce (c1640-1689), an early Massachusetts immigrant.

Henry Luce has been speculated as a member of the Luce family at Horton in Gloucestershire. The Luce family of Horton is often said to be a branch of the Norman family de Lucy, although there is no evidence other than a similarity of names. The relationship is unlikely but not impossible. One branch of the de Lucy family lived at Newington in Kent, just 9 miles from Horton. However, Henry Luce, the immigrant to America belonged to a y-chromosome haplogroup that originated in the British Isles, suggesting a Welsh, not a Norman, descent.

Coats of Arms

Arms of Lewes, of Hedon (near Hull, Yorkshire?): Gules a bend ermine between six owls Argent (Morant’s Additions to Burke, citing Glover’s Ordinary, a roll or arms created about 1308-1314).

Arms of Lewes, of London and Wales: Unknown. Crest: An eagle displayed Sable the claws resting on the wreath, holding in the beak a snake around the body proper (Fairburn’s Crests: Lewes of London; also William Price Llywelyn Lewes, Llysnewydd, Llandyssil, South Wales).

Arms of Lewis, of Mardy: Unknown. Crest: An eagle displayed Azure charged on the break with a bee volant Or, holding in the break a scroll of paper (Fairburn’s Crests: Sir William Thomas Lewis of Mardy, Aberdate, South Wales).

Arms of Lewis, of co. Monmouth: A griffin segreant Sable. Motto: Ha persa la fide, ha perso l’honore (Fairburn’s Crests: Charles Edward Lewis, of Saint-Pierre, co. Monmouth).

Arms of Llys, of Llysnewedd: Gules three serpents nowed in a triangle Argent (Burke’s General Armory).

Arms of Luce: Azure a crescent Argent (Burke’s General Armory). See also the 1782 grant of arms to [. . .] Lewis of Plymouth, co. Devon and Wales (Harl. MSS. Vol. 68 (1917), citing Grants of Arms XV, fo. 18).

Arms of Luce, of London, Antwerp and Channel Islands: Azure a crescent Argent. Crest: an eagle wings displayed regardant in the dexter claw a sword erect (Burke’s General Armory: Luce and Lucie or Lucy, Antwerp and London, 1730; Fairburn’s Crests: Luce, England). Woodward (p. 306) notes these arms also used by Lucy and says that they are allusive (Luce = Latin for light).

Arms of Lucie, of London: Unknown. Crest: a crescent Argent (Fairburn’s Crests).

Arms of Lucy, co. Dorset: Gules a pike hauriant Or.

Sources

Revised July 11, 2025.