Ancestry Newsletter – April 18, 2026

18 Apr Ancestry Newsletter – April 18, 2026

ANCESTRY- THE NEWSLETTER PODCAST STYLE!

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ANCESTRY- EH, WE’RE COMING HOME

We’re now getting inquiries from clients who want to determine if they have Canadian ancestors. If they do have Canadian ancestors, they may be eligible for dual citizenship in Canada.

This all stems from a recent change in the law (December 15, 2025), following the 2023 ruling that the “first-generation limit” on citizenship by descent was unconstitutional. The change allows children born abroad to Canadian parents (who were also born abroad) to gain citizenship, aiming to fix inequities for “lost Canadians” and align with modern family structures. The government aims to modernize citizenship laws to reflect that many Canadians work and live abroad.

So, it had nothing to do with Americans initially. However, since many Americans have been seeking bug-out places, don’t have extended family in America (no kids, parents passed away), and have mobile careers, many have moved abroad. That’s easier with dual citizenship, but it’s not required.

However, this also opens the door for people with more distant Canadian ancestry. A formal enforcement process for the U.S.-Canadian border was not established until the 1890s through the 1920s, with Prohibition closing the last of the open crossings, so many ancestors drifted back and forth across the porous border, particularly as the Northeast U.S. industrialized and needed workers.

So, if you are interested, we can work to prove a line of descent from your Canadian ancestor, or even see if you happen to have had a Canadian ancestor, as many clients find out for the first time when we research their ancestry, and they find out one of their colonial ancestors was a Loyalist and essentially was deported to Canada post-revolution, before one of their descendants returned to America.

I worked for a Canadian parent company and had five Canadian bosses, three of whom moved to America and are still here under some legal status, so it’s interesting to think about Americans now being able to go the other direction. Of course, unless you live in a high-housing-price city in the States, you may find that all that is affordable is Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or the Maritimes, which can make Nebraska and Maine seem like balmy climates.

You can see below where most American-Canadians live, and there is plenty of space around Hudson’s Bay!

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ANCESTRY- FROM ADAM AND EVE TO THE LAST OF THE NORMAN KINGS OF ENGLAND IN THIS LINE

We left off in the last edition following the line of descent from Adam and Eve to Edward III, King of England. The path so far represents 116 generations and includes notable people such as Noah, Abraham, King David of Israel, Jesus’ Great-Grandfather Matthan, the Kings of Britain, Roman Emperors, Danish Kings, and William the Conqueror, the King of England.

Edward was the last King in our journey, as the line proceeds through his son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1340 – 1399), an English prince, military leader, and statesman. He was the fourth son (third surviving) of King Edward III. Because of Gaunt’s royal origin, advantageous marriages and some generous land grants, he was one of the richest men of his era and an influential figure during the reigns of both his father and his nephew, Richard II. As Duke of Lancaster, he is the founder of the royal House of Lancaster, whose members would ascend the throne after his death. His birthplace, Ghent in Flanders, then known in English as Gaunt, was the origin of his name.

His anachronistic portrait is adjacent to the property of his descendant, the Duke of Beaufort, and hangs at Badminton House, Gloucestershire. Portrait commissioned in about 1593 by Sir Edward Hoby (1560-1617) for display inside Queensborough Castle, Kent, probably modeled on Gaunt’s now lost tomb effigy in Old St Paul’s Cathedral.

John’s son Henry Beaufort (c. 1375 – 11 April 1447) was an English Catholic prelate and statesman who held the offices of Bishop of Lincoln (1398), Bishop of Winchester (1404), and cardinal (1426). He served three times as Lord Chancellor and played an important role in English politics.

There were assertions that Henry interrogated Joan of Arc, as the painting below shows, but those claims appear to be false.

When Henry was Bishop of Lincoln, he had an illegitimate daughter, Jane Beaufort, with an unknown woman, sometimes thought to be the daughter of Alice Cherleton, Baroness Cherleton: “Henry fathered an illegitimate daughter, Jane Beaufort”, in 1402, who some make Alice’s daughter. Both Jane and her husband, Sir Edward Stradling, were named in Cardinal Beaufort’s will. Their marriage about 1423 brought Sir Edward into the political orbit of his shrewd and assertive father-in-law, to whom he may have owed his appointment as chamberlain of South Wales in December 1423, a position he held until March 1437.”

Jane married Sir Knight Edward Stradling, who was a Knight of the Sepulcher, and as mentioned, Chamberlain of South Wales, and Sheriff of Carmarthenshire. He fought at Agincourt and, in 1411, inherited St Athan, Llanfa, and Merthyr Mawr as the grandson and heir of Gwenllian Berkerolles.

In the next edition, we follow the Stradlings.

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ANCESTRY- HISTORY IS FULL OF SURPRISES

Sherod Bryant was born in December 1781 in North Carolina. He was described as “black” and “free” in records. Sherod moved to Tennessee around 1800 and bought 300 acres of land in Bryant Grove, Rutherford County (in what is now Long Hunter State Park), and near 3rd Avenue in Nashville, where the Schermerhorn Symphony Center is now.

He later bought more land and raised hogs and crops. He later bought land in the Donelson/Hermitage area, along Lebanon Pike, and much in downtown Nashville. He owned a large plantation of over 700 acres and owned over 1,000 acres of land in total.

He was one of the richest men in Tennessee and one of the largest land-owning black men in all of Tennessee. In 1850, he owned $15,000 worth of real estate and $10,900 worth of property in slaves. Today, this would be about $1,000,000 worth of buying power, which would put him in “elite” status at the time. A descendant who studied him described his success due to his work ethic and effort.

Sherod’s descendant, Ann L. Patterson Early, wrote a book about his life titled “Bryant Acres: A Love Story.” The story is based on oral stories passed down through generations.

Sherod owned 22 slaves according to the 1850 Slave Schedule, ranging from 50 years old to 1 year old. No doubt, he needed many workers to cultivate the many acres of his land. There is no evidence that he freed slaves at his death, and there are no descriptive records to show he kept his own family as slaves to protect them.

Influential Davidson County members stated that Sherod should be treated “in every respect as if he were a white man”. He knew Andrew Jackson in both business and personal life. Much of his land was lost during the Civil War, and much of it is under Percy Priest Lake, which was created in the 1960s. Sherod is buried in Bryanttown Cemetery in Donelson. He left a lasting impact on the area, and Bryant Creek and Bryant Grove Recreational Area and Trail are named after him.

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ANCESTRY- ENLISTED WOMEN IN WW2 AND WHAT THEY DID

My grandfather’s baby sister, Aunt May Bonnie (below), outlived all of her siblings, but was not to be outdone by them during World War II. She enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served as an aviation mechanic at Cherry Point, NC. You can see on the adjacent listing a sampling of the various types of jobs women Marines did during WW2.

She passed away at 96 in 2018, but, of note, at age 94, she was invited to the White House to meet President Obama as one of the four oldest living female Marines. Her humble response was to decline with something to the effect of “he has other things on his mind, besides meeting me”!

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ANCESTRY- GOLDDIGGER HAS SUCCESS

A client hired us to research John W. Alexander, a wealthy brickyard owner in Atlanta. His first wife died in 1918. He married again in 1920, and his second wife died in 1932. There were no known children from either marriage.

On July 4, 1940, at age 86, John married 39-year-old Pauline Fretwell Pounds of Valdosta. They promptly went on a 15-day honeymoon in Florida, where he purchased her a home in Miami valued at $7,500.

On July 19, 1940, at the conclusion of the honeymoon, John died from an intestinal obstruction, with contributory issues being hypocoagulative heart failure and coronary sclerosis.

John’s nieces and nephews contested his estate, arguing that he was only married for a short time and essentially were accusing his widow of being a gold digger. Before her marriage, Pauline appears to have spent her life working as a shoe saleslady in Atlanta and Miami, and she had been married once.

John’s nephew, representing other heirs, was granted an injunction prohibiting Pauline from disturbing any part of his holdings, rumored to be worth over $250,000

He claimed that the marriage was performed by “fraud and duress”, and that it was part of a “conspiracy whereby the defendant was to enter into a marriage contract and at his death obtain all of the property of John W. Alexander.” He further claimed that at the time of the wedding, John was “childish and didn’t know what he was doing.” It was further shared that he had previously suffered a stroke of paralysis, and his mind was weak and wholly irresponsible.”

They further went on to mention that on July 17, John was carried to a hospital under mysterious circumstances.

The next set of events was that on July 1, 1941, ten homes were auctioned off as directed by the judge, and Pauline was listed as the receiver. Pauline went on to buy more property, including the home below. Pauline lived until 1969.

The client was unable to obtain probate records from the court in Atlanta, so there is no clarity regarding what occurred. However, Pauline was apparently confirmed as heir and ended up with Alexander’s estate.

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ANCESTRY- NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT BEANS BEING THE SHORT STRAW

In the last edition, we mentioned that Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker was a survivor of the Black Bean Episode. WALKER, TEXAS RANGER Here’s more on what occurred:

Sam Houston ordered his expeditionary force to pull back from the Rio Grande to Gonzales, but only 400 soldiers retreated as ordered. On December 20, 1842, the remaining 350 Texan soldiers under the command of William S. Fisher approached Ciudad Mier. They camped on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and participated in the capture of the town. The Texans were unaware of the true number of Mexican troops stationed within the town. Once inside the city, the Texan soldiers were ambushed from their flanks and eventually surrendered in order to avoid the infamous Degüello.

The Mexicans army took 243 Texans as prisoners and marched them toward Mexico City via Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Monterrey, Nuevo León. On February 11, 1843, 181 Texans escaped, but by the end of the month, the lack of food and water in the mountainous Mexican desert resulted in 176 of them surrendering or being recaptured. This was in the vicinity of Salado, Tamaulipas.

When the prisoners reached Saltillo, Coahuila, they learned that an outraged Santa Anna had ordered all the escapees to be executed, but General and Governor Francisco Mejia of the state of Coahuila refused to follow the order. The new commander, Colonel Domingo Huerta, moved the prisoners to El Rancho Salado. By this time, diplomatic efforts on behalf of Texas by the foreign ministers of the United States and Great Britain led Santa Anna to compromise: he said one in ten of the prisoners would be killed.

To help determine who would die, Huerta had 159 white beans and 17 black beans placed in a pot. In what came to be known as the Black Bean Episode or the Bean Lottery, the Texans were blindfolded and ordered to draw beans. Officers and enlisted men, in alphabetical order, were ordered to draw. The seventeen men who drew black beans were allowed to write letters home before being executed by firing squad. On the evening of March 25, 1843, the Texans were shot in two groups, one of nine men and one of eight. According to legend, Huerta placed the black beans in the jar last and had the officers pick first, so that they would make up the majority of those killed.

The first Texan to draw a black bean was Major James Decatur Cocke. A witness recalled that Cocke held up the bean between his forefinger and thumb, and with a smile of contempt, said, “Boys, I told you so; I never failed in my life to draw a prize.” He later told a fellow Texan, “They only rob me of forty years.” Fearing that the Mexicans would strip his body after he was dead, he removed his pants and gave them to a companion whose clothing was in worse shape. He was shot with the sixteen others who drew black beans on March 25, 1843. His last words were reported to have been, “Tell my friends I die with grace.”

The other sixteen who drew black beans in the lottery were William Mosby Eastland, Patrick Mahan, James M. Ogden, James N. Torrey, Martin Carroll Wing, John L. Cash, Robert Holmes Dunham, Edward E. Este, Robert Harris, Thomas L. Jones, Christopher Roberts, William N. Rowan, James L. Shepherd, J. N. M. Thomson, James Turnbull, and Henry Walling. Shepherd survived the firing squad by pretending to be dead. The guards left him for dead in the courtyard, and he escaped in the night but was recaptured and shot. Eastland County, Texas, is named after William Mosby Eastland.

Captain Ewen Cameron had drawn a white bean but was executed anyway by Santa Anna a month later while being held at Perote Prison.

The survivors who picked white beans, including Bigfoot Wallace (above) and Samuel Walker (from the last edition), finished the march to Mexico City. They were later imprisoned at Perote Prison in the state of Veracruz, along with the 15 survivors of the Dawson Massacre and about 35 other men captured by General Adrián Woll in San Antonio. Some of the Texans escaped from Perote, while others died there. Most were prisoners until they were released, by order of Santa Anna, on September 16, 1844.

Pictured below is Frederic Remington’s The Mier Expedition- The Drawing of the Black Bean

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ANCESTRY- PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY, TODAY

Reach out to Dancestors Genealogy. Our genealogists will research, discover, and preserve your family history. No one is getting any younger, and stories disappear from memory every year, eventually fading from our ability to find them.

Preserve your legacy and the heritage of your ancestors.

Paper gets thrown in the trash; books survive!

Ready to embark on your family history journey? Don’t hesitate. Call Dan Nelson and get your project started!