An ancestor, Jane Austin, was an author who lived in New England and was a contemporary, and probably a friend, of Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson,as she probably was with other writers of early America. She wrote two historical fictions of our family: The Nameless Nobleman and Doctor LeBaron's Daughters.
The Nameless Nobleman tells of Francis LeBaron's arriving on a pirate ship in Buzzard's Bay, making it to shore and hiding out while he was healing from wounds in the attic of Mary Wilder's family. They eventually got married and he was able to live and work in the Plymouth Colony because he saved the leg of an inkeeper's wife with his up-to-date medical skills. His past was a mystery, eventually unveiled. He was a baron from France who was unable to claim his land for some reason. Mary referred to him fondly as "Le Baron de rien de tout!" and thus giving him claim to the surname, LeBaron. He was buried in Plymouth up on the hill. Down the hill from he and Mary's grave is Miles Standish' grave, giving the reader a hint of the prominence Frenchman, LeBaron, enjoyed in the colony.
A few years ago I visited Plymouth with my grandson, Brandyn. I wanted him to experience another aspect of his roots, one to balance the dominating Italian blood. He noticed that on one of the two gravestones for Francis LeBaron was written, "Here lies Francis LeBaron, lost at sea.... Brandyn was amused by "lies" since he really wasn't dead and arrived back in the colony after the gravestone was placed there in his memory.
The other gravestone under which he actually was buried was across the pathway and next to Mary Wilder. While Brandyn was chuckling about the writing on the first gravestone, it struck me that my family history in this root was all about Francis LeBaron and its roots. There is a book in the National Library of Congress on the LeBarons. But, as I looked at Mary Wilder's grave, it occured to me that she also is my ancestor, they were her daughters,too. She was famous in her own right and her roots can be traced back to England. I resolved to find out more about her family, too. That for some reason, the women in our history got left out of the story, except for bearing the children and caring for the house. The time has come to write about the women in our histories. Jane Austin beagan the process when she didn't use a penname. Her husband supported her writing in a time when women writers were not especially socially accepted. Now is a good time for some rich historical fiction on the women in our family tree.
What is the story in your history that is wanting to be told?
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I have been researching my family for a number of years, on and off. It is a common theme, to follow the male line, since women took their husband's names, and maiden names were often not recorded. I have purposefully looked for sisters, aunts, grandmothers, often with no success. One really obnoxious trend is carried on by my German family. If no male heir was born, then the family looked for a likely candidate (second or third son of a neighbor) to marry the daughter, and the husband took the daughter's name. Sisters, and often younger brothers, are left off the family tree which stretches back to the 1400s. My uncle, who has traced his and my father's family back to Germany and has met the current owners of the "family farm", was totally unconcerned when I located a great, great, aunt who had emmigrated at the same time as my gggfather. Not important since she is only a woman and couldn't carry on the all important NAME. The name I was only too happy to ditch on my marriage.
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