Four Centuries in the New World
A Descent from the Pioneer Families in Three Volumes

Volume the First

I am convinced that everyone wants to be found. You are only truly gone when people stop talking about you. Some people haven't been talked about in a long time, so it takes awhile to drag information forward. But eventually, everything is resolved in one way or another...."
my friend Alexandra Luken, Louisville Researcher, 2001

"...you will find this kin business gives you a lot to talk about."
my cousin Idelette Hillhouse, 1914 to her cousin Hattie Mitchell Stevens

"Be shure and answer this immediately on Recpt as I should like to hear from you all and what your future Prospects are and Calculations are."
my cousin John Stevens, 1865, the Boonesborough Letter to his cousin Patrick in Georgia

"Nothing more occurs to me to write this time, but my dear wife and children send greetings to you and all good friends who may or can be found living, hoping for and awaiting your reply by the first ship that can come. Commending you to the protection and care of God Almighty,
Always remaining your most obedient brother until death,
Petter Gunnarson Rambo"
my ancestor Peter Rambo in Philadelphia writing his sister in Sweden, 1692 after a gap of several decades

"This ball every 24 hours by naturall, uniforme and wonderful slie and smooth motion rouleth rounde, making with his Periode our naturall daye, whereby it seems to us that the huge infinite immoveable Globe should sway and tourne about."
my ancestor Leonard Digges, English mathematician, ca. 1550, quoted in E Maor, To Infinity and Beyond (Princeton 1991)

"It would be very easy for every family to keep a register of births marriages deaths & would certainly be satisfactory to descendants. But it seems the several branches of our family have been on this point extremely negligent."
my ancestor Reverend Iverson Lewis Brookes, about 1860, to his granddaughter

"Here's tae us. Wha's like us.
Damn few, and they're a' deid!"
an Old Scottish Toast, perhaps from Burns

"I want to go Home."
my great grandfather Captain Patrick Martin Stevens, 6 January, 1905 at Oak Hill as he died

I sense them every one in every morning light. I hold them close and love them, all their kindness and successes and their failures too: they are my family and part of me.

Pat M Stevens IV
January 15, 2008
v 11.0 in Three Parts