The Grimké Brothers
It’s impossible to spend much time reading about the abolition and women’s suffrage movements in early 19th century America without running across the Grimké sisters. Sarah and Angelina Grimké were among the leading lights of both those civil rights movements prior to the Civil War, and I have long admired their courage and dedication to promoting social equality. It was only recently, however, that I learned that Sarah’s and Angelina’s nephews—the Grimké brothers—were among the leading lights of late 19th century and early 20th century intellectual and civil rights movements.
Refugees in London
When I think of early immigration to the United States from the part of Europe that is now Germany, I tend to think of German settlers in Pennsylvania, many of whom were religious dissenters like the Mennonite ancestors I have written about in a previous post. As a result, I was quite surprised to learn that my seven-times great-grandfather, Johann Henrich Krantz, arrived in New York in 1710 and settled along the Hudson River in Ulster County. As I learned more about why he arrived when and where he did, I came to see many parallels between his experience and that of refugees and asylum seekers today.
A Well-Known Furniture Manufacturer
My mother owned quite a few antiques although she wasn’t really a collector. She only occasionally purchased antiques herself, but she had many objects that she had inherited from family members. When she passed away last year, I went through these items and consigned most of them to an antique store. I ended up keeping one chair, however, after my cats adopted it as their own. As it turns out, those cats have impressively good taste in antique furniture.
The Motherlode of Erismans
I have an unusual last name. For much of my life, I never met anyone named Erisman to whom I wasn’t closely related, close enough that we could easily calculate what flavor of cousin we were. Some years back, however, while visiting Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on a business trip, I was suddenly inundated by Erismans—a colleague’s child’s kindergarten teacher, a local car dealership, the high school’s star quarterback smiling from a billboard. There were Erismans everywhere, even on a road sign. I had, I concluded, found the motherlode of Erismans.