The Mayfair Family Tree--More New Stuff

As I've said, one thing I have noticed is a lot of interest in the Mayfair family tree.  I can certainly understand why.  With what we now know about what our DNA can tell us about who our relatives, our ancestors were and are, it's certain to have raised all kinds of new questions about how our DNA tells us these things.  Certainly, not everyone has gotten a pleasant shock from DNA test results.  We've learned things about our genetics that has caused us to approach our family trees in new ways, forced us to ask difficult questions.

In the process, we've learned new terms, like "endogamy" and "pedigree collapse".  We've learned to understand our ancestors in the context of the time periods they lived in, through history.  We have seen celebrities on TV shows learning things about their ancestors both known and unknown, both fascinating and troubling.  We have even learned, to our utter shock, that many of us have not one, not two, but many ancestors and relatives who were more than mere footnotes in the pages of history, even famous.

How is that possible?!

Endogamous marriages, particularly if they happen multiple times across several generations, is what largely explains that one.  

What was once extraordinary, mindboggling, utterly confusing, is becoming normal.  But what can it tell us about the Mayfair family tree?

If you've checked back on the main website in the past day or so, you might have noticed I've added more regarding the Mayfair Family tree.  The three new pages on Rowan and Mona Mayfair and Michael Curry can also be accessed from the list of the Mayfair men on the Mayfair Family Tree page.

There is a link for each that will take you directly to that person's table on each of the three pages.  For example, to see how Daniel McIntyre and Rowan Mayfair are most closely related, you'd click on Relation to Rowan Mayfair under Daniel McIntyre in the list of the Mayfair men.

The paternity of the Mayfair Witches is something that is controversial, even to the Witches themselves.  Which is why there was some uncertainty as to who had fathered Antha Mayfair: Lionel Mayfair (Stella's brother and Antha's uncle) or Cortland Mayfair, who was also Barbara Ann Mayfair's father.  However, it was Cortland who fathered Antha Mayfair. 

As you can imagine, this makes for a very interesting and twisted family tree either way you look at it.

On Mona's page, I've added Lestan Mayfair, who was the brother of Marie Claudette and the patriarch, I guess you'd call it, of the Fontevrault Mayfairs.  Those are the Mayfairs who branched off the main line to establish their own plantation, Fontevrault, after Augustin Mayfair lost a duel with Julien Mayfair.  

To indicate Lestan Mayfair is the "patriarch" of this branch of Mayfairs, and just for funsies, I put a little bitty version of this under his name:

Belle Grove Plantation was the plantation shown in The Witches' Companion as an example of what Fontevrault might have looked like.  You can see a bit more at the bottom of the page Amelia Street--The Fontevrault Outpost

The "Mayfair 500", Michael Curry's term for how many Mayfair cousins there are, is now part of the name of a new page, Mayfair 500--How Cousins Are Made

This page, with some graphics I made for a video, is a basic overview of...well, how cousins are made.  Hopefully, I've put it together in a way that makes sense!   

All of these pages can be found under the subcategory The Mayfair Witches, where the Mayfair Family Tree page is found.

The Mayfair Witches Family Tree~Mona Mayfair Page Begun

I've been doing a lot with the family tree of the Mayfair Witches.  We know a lot about genetics today than we did when the books were first published, beginning with The Witching Hour in 1990.  I have used my family tree maker software to not only build the tree, but also to calculate relatedness. 

As you can imagine, the software has its own names for relatives and degrees of relatedness.  On a tree like the Mayfair tree, this can be problematic because of how many inward twists and loops the tree makes between the same individuals.  Like this:

For Michael Curry and Rowan Mayfair, I have hourglass and extended family charts on their individual relatedness pages, one that has Lionel Mayfair as Antha Mayfair's father, and one with Cortland Mayfair as Antha Mayfair's father.

Mayfair Relatedness~Rowan Mayfair

Mayfair Relatedness~Michael Curry

The software also wants to tell me about Morrigan Mayfair, Michael Curry's Taltos daughter with Mona Mayfair.  And Mona Mayfair is described as a "twentyfold" Mayfair.  I am certainly going to see if I can get the software to tell me more about this twentyfold thing, but I thought I'd also include Morrigan Mayfair (on her own page).

Until then, I've begun the page on Mona Mayfair, which is by no means complete...

Mayfair Relatedness~Mona Mayfair 

As stated on Rowan Mayfair's Relatedness page above, don't be shy; if you have any questions or you'd like to make a suggestion, alert me to an OOPSIES, I can be reached by old fashioned email at:

mayfair_95@yahoo.com

Because Lycos ate my webmistress@comeintomyparlor.com email 

If You Have Not Seen the First Street Family Gallery...

...you may see it here on the main website: First Street Family Gallery

This is a page I've decided to make to discuss one aspect of the history of 1239 First Street in New Orleans: those who first called it home.  As you might have guessed, I have more than one reason to be interested in this.  However, this page is meant to learn more about who these people were who built a mansion in the Garden District to call home, and their contribution to the history of New Orleans.

I was beyond thrilled to learn more about these people, AND to find pictures of them!  One thing I noticed in one of the images of the First Street Parlor that was taken in 1964 was a picture on the wall beside the fireplace closest to the windows that open on the First Street end of the parlor.  It looks like someone standing next to that same fireplace, someone from a time well before 1964.

It was hard to really tell much about the woman besides the length of her gown as a means of attempting to date the picture.  Except that the fireplace in the picture on the wall and the fireplace in the room photographed appeared to be the exact same one.  So I thought I would get a closer look at both, hoping perhaps there is someone who might know who the woman in the picture on the wall is.

It's easy to imagine this might be a portrait of Pamela Starr Clapp, the wife of Emory Clapp.  As I understand it, the house was bought for her as a wedding gift from her husband, and she lived there until she died in 1934.  Pamela Starr Clapp survived her husband by many decades, and remained in the house because she had loved it.

The house was then sold to Judge Wisdom and his wife, who lived there for many years.  The house is still a private residence today, and for that reason, I will avoid mention of who lives there now or who has lived there since Anne Rice sold the house.  

As I have begun to research the histories of the houses surrounding this one, and the histories of the houses in New Orleans that are similar to this one, one thing I've learned that I think is interesting is what business many of those owners were in.

Example: Emory Clapp, who was apparently a cotton merchant.  A Connecticut native, Robert Slark Day had worked for him, which no doubt explains how he met Clapp's adopted daughter, Sarah.

The house across Chestnut, the Carroll-Crawford house, was built about 1869, a little over ten years after 1239 First Street had been built.  Joseph Carroll had also been a cotton merchant from Virginia.

And after the Civil War, or the War Between the States, or whichever name you choose to refer to it by. The more I learn, the more significant that distinction appears to have been, especially in terms of economics.

When I was able to find pictures of the people shown here so far, I was extremely thrilled.  When you can look at these people in photographs, that is the moment they cease to be merely names in history books.  It's a bit like visiting a cemetery where there are actual photographs of the people whose graves you are standing at on their headstones or mausoleum crypts.  No matter how long they've been gone, those pictures are what remind us that these were once living people just as we are right now.

New Orleans Architecture

I've updated the houses that appear on Italianate Greek Revival in New Orleans Gallery.  There are a variety of houses in New Orleans that are similar to the Brevard-Rice house.  Hopefully, I'll be able to add more soon...

Interesting similarities, aren't there?

The Family Tree Does Not Fork. Much.

I have updated the Mayfair Relatedness page.  A lot.

In listing the various relations between Rowan Mayfair and several of the Mayfair ancestors, the family tree software I use seems to prefer the most innocuous description possible.  You'll see a lot of "half this, step that".  Considering the fact that it won't let me show Cortland Mayfair on the pedigree chart as Rowan's father if I have Dierdre Mayfair as the mother on it, this isn't all that surprising.

I've kept the additional relations, the ones related to Michael Curry as well, in the lists.  That is actually a large part of understanding how Rowan and Michael could have produced a Taltos with 92 chromosomes on the DNA instead of the usual human 46.

In other words, we can see more clearly how Lasher carried out his own brand of genetic engineering.  The idea was to produce a witch strong enough, mostly in terms of genetics, to be his "doorway" back into the world.

This is the kind of family tree that I wish I could figure out how to make an interactive tree, where you can click on buttons to see all of this in one tree.  And now that I've written this, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up giving it a shot!

So far, I have focused on Rowan Mayfair.  Since Mona Mayfair was the witch with the most lines of descent, she became the new designee of the Legacy.  Mona, according to the research she did on her family tree and using her computer to count the individual lines of descent, learned she was a "twentyfold" Mayfair.  Twenty different lines of descent.

That will most likely be next.  Mona Mayfair.

Update:

Added to the page above is a link an hourglass chart I made for Rowan Mayfair from family tree software.  It is in poster format and spreads across 8 pages.

Because the software WILL not allow me to add Cortland Mayfair as Rowan's father when Dierdre Mayfair is listed as her mother, you won't see her linked to Cortland Mayfair.  Oddly enough, the Relationship Calculator still calculates based on Cortland and Dierdre Mayfair as Rowan's parents.

Assuming that Lionel Mayfair was Antha Mayfair's father, you'll see the same omission for the parents of Antha Mayfair, which lists only Stella Mayfair.  I get this charming little nastygram if I try to add either Cortland or Lionel Mayfair as the fathers of Rowan and Antha, respectively: