Latest from the Blog
A Letter from Liberty: A 1941 Family Reflection and a Father’s Tribute
Written in the shadow of war, preserved across generations. In the quiet days just before Christmas 1941—only weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor—my second great-granduncle, Thomas Jefferson “Jeff” McDonald Sr.,[1] sat down in Liberty, South Carolina, to write a long and thoughtful letter to his niece, my grandaunt, Mrs. Agnes (McDonald) Blackerby,[2] in Wilsonville,…
The Remarkable Coincidences of Ancestral Migration
Our father’s1 family came from Massachusetts, and our mother’s2 roots traced back to Alabama. They met in California and we all believed they were the first from either side to venture this far west—aside from our mother’s uncle,3 who settled in California after serving in the Navy during World War II. That belief began to…
Gunfire at the Shanghai Club: The Untold Story of Fanny Bruce and Sidney Shirvington
Several years ago, I connected on Facebook with a family of Shervingtons living throughout California’s Central Valley—from Inyo County to Sacramento and Modesto. I had grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area never knowing they existed. The surname “Shervington,” along with one of its variants “Shirvington,” is rare—thankfully making genealogical research a bit more…
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