Solo Scot

My grandmother said her ancestors came from Scotland, but the truth is, most came from England. On the 1870 Canadian Census forms, ones origin (meaning ancestry) was declared, and almost all of my many Nova Scotia families listed themselves as English. One exception was the Ralstons. They were described as Scotch. Perhaps my grandmother was from a matriarchal family, culturally.

The Pretender

The most famous immigrant ancestor of the Lynches was Jeremiah, a great-granduncle. He was an actor with a dramatic life. As an 11-year-old, he was working in a textile mill in Pawcatuck, Connecticut – his poor family having just arrived in the US from County Kerry. Somehow, from that start, he grew up to become

Roots

The story of my family is one of immigration, as it is for all white Americans. In my current drawing project, I draw at the places of my ancestors and am quite surprised to see how fruitful my research can be, and how lucky I’ve been to find that so many of my ancestors lived

Saplings

By the trunk of every family tree are saplings that we suspect are connected somewhere below. James Lynch is one of those saplings. I know a lot about him, but not where we connect. He and his wife, Margaret Collins, were both Irish immigrants—James arriving in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1857. The two married in 1859

Crowded House

Michael Lynch left his family’s tiny patch of rented turf on the shore of Dingle Bay in 1855 with his new bride Mary Fenton, and headed to Connecticut, never to return. (One census states that Mary came a year after her husband.) Michael ended up in Bozrahville, Connecticut, a little mill town on the Yantic

So Many Sullivans

Soon after her husband died in 1898, my great-grandmother Mary Sullivan Lynch moved into this mill house in Norwich, Connecticut, with her son Timothy. This was one of a number of identical brick houses, built by the Yantic River in 1855 for workers of the big Falls Company textile mill, a short walk away. These

Cotton Mill

There’s been a mill on this spot in Bozrah, Connecticut, since 1814. Back then, the village was called Bozrahville and a series of cotton mills were here, powered by the Yantic River. On the day of my midsummer visit, the river was reduced to a sad trickle. This is a tiny old mill village, seemingly

Starting Point

This stone wall spanning across the Yantic River may be the foundation of the Lynch story in America—a sort of Plymouth Rock. It’s in a wooded area, under a little now-closed bridge, on a dead-end street, in rural Lebanon, Connecticut. This place has been left behind and forgotten, as has so much of my family’s

Presidential Connections

President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) and I are related. It’s true. Really. The 13th US President’s great-grandfather, Captain John Fillmore II (1701-1777), who lived in this house in Norwich, Connecticut, is also my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. It’s that simple. Captain John II was the son of an English immigrant, John Fillmore, who came from Manchester, England and

Tenant to Tenement

This was the first home of my Lynch ancestors in America. In 1884, John Lynch and his wife, Mary Sullivan, along with their six surviving children abandoned Cahersiveen in Kerry, Ireland, and joined relatives and neighbors who had settled in Southeastern Connecticut. They switched from tenant farming to tenement living, leaving behind a tiny windswept