Bob Cihla passed away at 4 am this morn­ing. I’ll pass along more detail as I hear it. Funeral arrange­ments will be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Today Bob was moved to Mercy Hos­pice House in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Our asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent, Bob Cihla, has tran­si­tioned to hos­pice care. He is in end stage COPD with the com­pli­ca­tion of inter­sti­tial lung fibro­sis. The doc­tors tell us that there isn’t any­thing med­ically to do to make him bet­ter so they are doing pal­lia­tive care.

Please keep Bob and the Cihla fam­ily in your thoughts and prayers.

THE BANNS HAD been posted on the Meet­ing House door. Young Joseph Par­sons was to wed Eliz­a­beth Strong. In Northamp­ton, when the eldest son of a wealthy man mar­ried the daugh­ter of a church elder, the whole town was invited to the cel­e­bra­tion. Because of its near­ness to mown mead­ow­land with room enough for towns­folk to ram­ble, all par­ties agreed that Joseph Par­sons’ house was the best loca­tion for the wed­ding feast, though some in the town planned to stay away in protest.

I was delighted to dis­cover the book My Enemy’s Tears: The Witch of Northamp­ton by Karen Vor­beck Williams includes the wed­ding of Joseph Par­sons and Eliz­a­beth Strong, daugh­ter of Elder John Strong and Abi­gail Ford. The book goes on to state that the bride’s fam­ily was not opposed to a lit­tle merry-making, and we con­tinue the wed­ding through Chap­ter XVI.

Con­tinue read­ing →

I was walk­ing through Barnes & Noble last week and noticed there is a new book out from Brooke Shields, There Was a Lit­tle Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me. Brooke has writ­ten sev­eral book, and her ances­try has been fea­tured on Who Do You Think You Are.

Brooke is a 10th great grand­daugh­ter of Elder John Strong and Abi­gail Ford, through the Thomas line:

1-John Strong ( — ) + Abi­gail Ford ( — )
2-Thomas Strong ( — ) + Rachel Holton ( — )
3-Joseph Strong ( — ) + Sarah Allen ( — )
4-Phineas Strong ( — ) + Mary Parker ( — )
5-Ozias Strong ( — ) + Susanna West ( — )
6-Susanna Strong ( — ) + John Baker ( — )
7-Thirza Baker ( — ) + George Sheffield ( — )
8-Betsey Sheffield ( — ) + John Keyes Camp­bell ( — )
9-Mary Camp­bell ( — ) + Charles Arthur Moore ( — )
10-Mary Elsie Moore ( — ) + Marino Tor­lonia ( — ), 4th Prince of Civitella-Cesi 11-Marina, Princess Tor­lonia ( — ) + Fran­cis Xavier Shields ( — )
12-Francis Alexan­der Shields ( — ) + Teri Schmon ( — )
13-Christa Brooke Camille Shields (1965– )

Here is the book descrip­tion from Amazon:

Con­tinue read­ing →