All posts by Christopher C. Child

Find Out How Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are Distantly Related

Photo of Taylor Swift by Cosmopolitan UK; photo of Travis Kelce by Erik Drost. Via Wikimedia Commons.

The Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl again soon, as they have three times out of the last four years. Their appearances in 2021 and 2023 prompted two..

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Catholic Mayflower Descendants

Cover of the summer issue of Mayflower Descendant. Photo: Cimetière Saint-Jean, St. Barthélemy, burial location of Louis Charles Lambert and his wife Jeanne Augustine.

Our summer issue of the Mayflower Descendant includes an article by myself and Michael Leclerc..

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Quaker Marriage Records

1736 marriage of Joseph Brownell and Leah Lawton (1)

The upcoming summer issue of the Mayflower Descendant includes an interesting article by Mark Wentling entitled “Joseph Brownell (1699-ca. 1773) of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and Little Compton, Rhode Island:..

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The Last Woman Enslaved in Woodstock, Connecticut

First Congregational Church, Woodstock, Connecticut. Photograph by John Phelan.

I read two stories of interest in a recent issue of The Woodstock Villager, a local newspaper from my grandfather’s Connecticut hometown. The first story (on page A3) concerned a Witness..

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Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride—Which Old North Church?

View of Old North Church, Boston. Photo by Ajay Suresh via Wikimedia Commons.

A few months ago, I chaperoned my daughter’s school field trip to the Paul Revere House in Boston’s North End. I had previously visited this house several times over the course of five..

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A Murdaugh Mayflower Mystery

This post is a collaboration between myself and Vita-Brevis contributor Jeff Record , as we were both watching Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal on Netflix, as well as news coverage of the recent murder trial of Alex Murdaugh . Jeff alerted me to a possible Mayflower

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An Early Patrick in Massachusetts

Patrick Tracy, 1784/1786, by John Trumbull, at the National Gallery of Art.

Last year, the Boston Globe interviewed my colleague Sarah Dery on the ancestry of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and myself on the “Boston Brahmin” ancestry..

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Coolidge Connections

With the recent return of the second season of White Lotus, a few friends have asked me if the actress Jennifer Coolidge is related to President Calvin Coolidge. While this was a kinship I had discovered years ago (back when she appeared in the American Pie movies..

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Ancestry of Patrick Mahomes (Part II)

Photo courtesy of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Two years ago, I wrote a post about some of the maternal ancestors of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, using research I had begun the previous year after his team’s Super Bowl victory. The post followed some..

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Trace Amounts

The U.S. Men’s team at the first FIFA World Cup in 1930, the only time the United States placed in the top four

When I was watching the recent World Cup, and the various countries playing, I found myself considering genealogical connections I have found within the..

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