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

What is Lost

A project I’m currently working on is researching my immigrant ancestors and drawing at the places where they lived. It combines two hot topics of contemporary American times: immigration and genealogy. Often the records I find resemble the immigrant ancestor’s house that stood before me in this picture—far from complete. To piece together a family

Pleasing Characteristics

My immigrant great-great-grandmother Mary Sullivan Lynch lived in this house for a year in 1903 with her son Timothy. She was a widow at the time. I’m confident that she had little or nothing to do with the church next door which was built in 1890 because she was a Catholic and belonged to St.

Gun Factory

It must have been an odd transition for the Lynches to relocate from farming the oceanfront bog lands of Cahersiveen, Kerry, Ireland, to the factory life in the small industrial city of Norwich, Connecticut, in the 1800s. Among the places that my ancestors worked, was here, at the big now-empty firearms factory downtown. Connecticut has

Mill Workers

I grew up in a mill town. Massive red brick structures like this one sat abandoned along the Blackstone River in Cumberland, Rhode Island. They were the beached whales of the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, some have been converted to condominiums with wonderful loft spaces. Some are scrappy artists’ studios. Others wait and rot.  Norwich, Connecticut,

Upstairs Downstairs

This is not the mansion where Mary Lynch worked and lived in 1900 in Norwich, Connecticut. That was down by the other end of Sachem Street, on broad beautiful Washington Street. This is the multi-family house where she died in 1938. Mary was living at that time with her retired, widowed brother John, her widowed

The Weaver

John J. Lynch, my great-great uncle, lived here in 1900 with his wife Delia. Their home was the left one of the four in this multi-family building. It’s within walking distance of the big factories of downtown Norwalk, Connecticut. Both John and Delia were from Ireland. John worked as a “cotton weaver” according to census

Upper Falls

On a cold clear day in late November, as the sun was setting, I drew at the Upper Falls Heritage Park in Norwich, Connecticut by the remains of an old mill building. Norwich was a town of water-powered industry and in the last century, my great-great grandfather lived here. A few weeks ago, I had