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 →

This arti­cle is from an SFAA mem­ber, and will be in an upcom­ing book.

A 7th gen­er­a­tion Ver­mont Yan­kee, born in Mont­pe­lier VT to a Methodist fam­ily, Father Ron Law­son has led a fas­ci­nat­ing life…. And con­tin­ues to do so.

Grad­u­at­ing with the class of 1956 from Mid­dle­bury Col­lege, tak­ing his degree in Russ­ian, he had a two-year com­mit­ment to US Army Intel­li­gence in the field of coun­teres­pi­onage. He stayed with the Army for another two years attain­ing the rank of 1st Lieu­tenant. Assigned to West Berlin after com­plet­ing a spe­cial dual lan­guage course (Ger­man and Pol­ish) taught in the Hawkins Bar­racks in Ober­am­mer­gau, Bavaria, he con­tin­ued as a “spy catcher”.
Con­tinue read­ing →

Orville Nathan Strong (1857–1936)

Orville Nathan Strong was the grand­fa­ther of J. E. Gilbert, our SFAA President.

Born 23 Jan­u­ary 1857 in Rod­man, Jef­fer­son Co., NY.
Died 8 Decem­ber 1936 in Jasper, Walker Co., AL.

Diana Frances Spencer, H.R.H. The Princess of Wales (1961–1997) A beau­ti­ful young woman, and one of the most beloved peo­ple in his­tory. She died in a tragic auto­mo­bile acci­dent in France. How­ever, the legacy of her Strong her­itage lives on though her two sons; Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales (1982-), heir to the throne of Eng­land, and Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales (1984-) Lady Diana was a 9th great — grand­daugh­ter of Elder John.

Descen­dants of John Strong can claim almost 100 notable kin from the more than 250 whose lines of ascen­dancy are pre­sented in Gary Boyd Roberts’ “The New Eng­land Ances­try of H.R.H. The Princess of Wales”

Tues­day, July 29, 2008

Grave marker submitted

We just received a pic­ture of a grave marker in Geneva, New York.  It was sub­mit­ted by a per­son that was very moved by the inscrip­tion.  Appar­ently we can still influ­ence peo­ple after we are gone.  Josiah Strong (b. Jun 17, 1758, d. Nov 14, 1841) served our coun­try in the first years of the strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.  He is descended from the Samuel line and is listed in Dwight’s His­tory on page 1422.

Click on the head­stone to see the full size image

Tues­day, July 3, 2007

Sam­son Strong Reunion