Some quick backstory for anybody who cares about obscure family history

This is my dad's dad's mom's dad. Vernon was one of five kids who came to America from England when he was a little kid and both his parents passed away young.

The five kids are: Lillian, Violette, Harley, Vernon, and Lota.

Lillian moves to Washington D.C.. Violette, Harley and Vernon stick around in CT, with the two brothers opening up wallpaper stores. Lota sadly passes away at 19

Vernon marries a woman named Theresa Peck, (TPH in journals). They have two kids: Doris and Sarah. Doris dies at 7 years old from a now-curable disease and every year Theresa visits her grave on her birthday.

Sarah becomes an actress. She gets married to a Leonard Barker and has one kid, my grandpa Peter. Then shit goes down, they get divorced (!!! scandalous) and Leonard kidnaps Peter. There's an ugly custody battle when he's 11 because Sarah is considered an unfit mom because she's an actress without a steady income

Theresa and Vernon step up and take Peter and Sarah back into their home so the family can stay together

They basically become like second parents to my grandpa who remembered them well.

Leonard disappears back to one of the Midwestern states, starts a new family. We have some half-siblings on that side but my grandpa wanted nothing to do with them or his dad.

Vernon passes away before Peter comes of age, which is important because Leonard suddenly shows up out of the blue to contest custody again. There's a long letter from Theresa's lawyer literally the day after her husband died warning her not to let Leonard back in the picture

anyway

We have diaries of Vernon and his older sister Violette (not yet transcribed). Vernon is very "and then this person who was a deacon of this church and lived on this street and also it was very cold today"

and Violette is very "My soul is black. No happiness can breach it."

So I'm curious to see the contrast between the sibs.

A lot of the places mentioned still stand today (Taft Hotel, clubs they went to, Schubert theater, etc)

Peter (my brother) is now getting really into family history which excites me because I inherited a lot of family genealogy shit from my dad.

And we're seeing images of Dad all over the internet. In googling a lot of stuff, Peter's coming across forum posts of "Hey does anyone know how I can get X records from Y town or if anyone has photos of Z people?? My kids aren't interested in this stuff."

signed by a

Jonathan H

hmmn

omg what a fun project!

oh man your dad would be so happy that you're into it now, though

oh wow, that's so cool

I love that he can get sarcastic sometimes too. “Went to visit with Theresa and Mitzi the Black Cat. (Mitzi is the black cat)”

Just got through tracking his awesome summer vacation and went “hang on we do that route nowadays”. Went from New Haven through the Berkshires up to Brattleboro VT, went across the NH mountains to see the Old man in the Mountain, up to Portland Maine and then down in from Ipswich to Salem MA and then cut across to Lexington and Concord. Pretty awesome travel