Most who knows me likely know I am writing a book, or trying to. It is loosely based on my family’s history and includes real stories of actual people, including two murders that happened in real life. My Mom and Dad were from similar stock: Scotch-Irish, English, and German immigrants to the America’s, both families coming over very early as my research discovered. The most recent immigrant appears to have arrived in the US in 1776 as a British solider, an Ulsterman called John Stroud.
Every other ancestor on both sides of my family came to the US prior to the revolution.
That’s kind of amazing! One of them, my 7th Great Grandfather, John Ashby, traded in the Americas in the 1670s. His son was appointed Cassique of an area of the South Carolina colony by King Charles II in 1663. They are the family I am looking into at the moment for the book and I recently learned that they were English Barons with a complicated history. That research lead me from castles in Europe to becoming destitute in America, then wealthy again. It’s quite a story.
Along the way, In Leicester in the South of England, the family had been awarded an estate by Charles II for his service the King fighting Cromwell. Quenby Hall was, and is, a great estate and by some is credited indirectly for creating the first Leicester veined cheese, later called Stilton. Wiki has the story: Link here.
