Thoughts on family and generations of ancestors reflecting genetics.

My father's family descended from Mayflower ancestors from England, settling later in both the USA and Canada. I count Ralph Waldo Emerson among our ancestors. Emerson was from a line of 7 Generations from the Mayflower arrival in Plymout, MA, starting with our mutual ancestors Elizabeth Tilley and John Howland. Their children included their daughter Hope Howland and a number of other siblings.  

Hope married John Chipman. Lydia Chipman (1654)-1730) (Daughter of John Chipman (1699-1756 and Mary Skiffe) and Handley Chipman (1717-1799)-(Son of John Chipman (1669-1756) and Elizabeth Handley) were grandchildren of Hope and John Chipman, along with nine other children, and at that point the line split, as to the connection with Emerson. Lydia Chipman was Emerson's Great Great Great Grandmother. Her daughter, Lydia Sargent was Emerson's Great Great Grandmother. Lydia Sargeant's daughter, Emerson's Great Grandmother, was Hannah Waite.  Hannah Waite's daughter was Emerson's Grandmother Hannah Upham.  Hannah Upham's daughter Ruth Haskins was Emerson's mother. So my family ancestor Handley Chipman and Emerson were separated by 5 generations.   

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Hope's grandson Handley Chipman, relocated my ancestors from the United States to Nova Scotia from that line with Jane Allen in 1760. He was a judge and farmer. Other family members stayed in the United States. A son named Jabez Howland of the Mayflower ancestors built the Howland House in Plymouth, MA and Elizabeth Tilley spent her older years there. I visited it and it gave me goosebumps to think Elizabeth Tilley lived there. The home stands today as a museum and source of information about our Mayflower ancestors. Handley Chipman was given a large land grant in Nova Scotia by the English government. Their son John Chipman and Eunice Dixon married and had Daniel Chipman, 1782. Daniel Chipman married Sarah Bishop. Their daughter Sarah Elizabeth Chipman, 1808, married William Odber Smith, a pharmacist who came from a line of doctors. Sarah's daughter Ella Victoria Smith, 1837,was one of six children and had five half-siblings. She married Frederick Billings Miles and they were my Great Great Grandparents. They moved from Canada in 1900 to the United States.

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My Great Great Grandparent's, Ella Victoria Smith Miles, 1837-1904, and Frederick Billings Miles, 1833-1891, had nine children. Frederick Billings Miles had a partnership with the head of Armor Beef and described himself as a capitalist. He was involved in a lot of different businesses over the years and got into some financial and potential legal difficulties at one point, which he eventually recovered from.  

The sixth child of Ella Victoria Smith Miles and Frederick Billings Miles was Herbert Delahaye Miles,1866-1958.  He lived the longest of his siblings, dying at 91. He and my grand father both were executives with Armor beef. Herbert wrote poetry, including one about a family oral story of the Mayflower history. He was in charge of the ancestry records in North Carolina and owned the historic Miles building in Asheville. He transformed the Italianate space in 1925 from a men's club to a stylish office and retail setting. It is now known not just as the Historic Miles building but the Asheville Grove Arcade, which I have visited. It has a very impressive collection of upscale stores with gorgeous architecture.  Pictures of my Great Grand Father, my Great Grand Uncle Herbert, my paternal Grand Father and my oldest son Jesse are absolutely uncanny in resemblance. I do not really have information regarding Great Uncle Herbert's children and their descendants but I do know he was married and had children.

The youngest child in the family of Ella Victoria Smith Miles and Frederick Billings Miles was Reginald Odber Miles, 1881-1929, who married Josephine Lackner a daughter of a physician and she was a graduate of the University of Chicago. Their daughter Josephine Miles, 1911-1971, was the first woman Tenured Professor on the staff of the English department at Berkeley and a Pulitzer Prize nominee for poetry. Of her siblings, her brother John Miles, 1915-2003, was a writer and follower of Henry David Thoreau.  Another brother Richard Billing Miles, 1913-2003, graduated from Stanford University and was Vice President of a Real Estate Bank.

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The second oldest child of Ella Victoria Smith Miles and Frederick Billings Miles was my paternal Great Grandfather, Francis Frederick Miles, 1859-1900. He died early of Tuberculosis. He was an executive at Armor Beef, who bought a lot of shares of Stanford Oil that put his children with Ada Harte through college. Now we are talking four generations ago. He and his wife had eight children two of whom died in childhood. The other children included my Grand Father Frank Harry Miles, aka Dop, 1896-1968, the 8th child of nine children; a sister who studied French at the University of Illinois; a sister who obtained a master's degree in art at the Art Institute of Chicago; a sister who taught college Home Economics classes and was educated at Columbia University and schools in Canada; and a nurse. My grandfather and another brother were in sales. The husbands of my Great Grandfather's sisters were educated at a number of well-known colleges. Their professions included a doctor and minister, a chemical patent attorney, and a Plant Pathologist Ph.D. The latter's son followed in his father's footsteps also completing a doctorate in Plant Pathology and becoming a university professor. The oldest child in the family was Marion, 1884-1962, who was the  nurse. She married Charles Belfry Kelly, a doctor and they were Chinese missionaries. They collected some art work in China and I was later willed from my paternal grandfather, two landscape ink paintings on silk that the Kelly's acquired in China. Their son, like his cousin acquired a doctorate in plant pathology and became a university professor and both men and their families were located in Kansas at different points in time and were regular visitors of our family, during those time periods. ​

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Frank and Florence had my father Frank Elliott Miles in 1927 and he died in 2006. As I mentioned before, he was a farmer. My mother was a nurse. My father was unusual at the time in that he was a college-educated farmer, who studied agriculture the University of Missouri and did not inherit his farm. His brother Alan was educated at the University of Arkansas in architecture. Uncle Alan taught architecture at UCLA and before that the University of Colorado and University of Kansas. He also was gifted in ceramics.  He opened a ceramic glazing business in southern California. His family often visited our family during the time he taught at KU and all the children went on to have successful careers in the business world. 

My sister Amy's youngest daughter Sally is an architect in Hawaii.  She has a master's degree fom Kansas State University and is a partner in an architectural firm. Business, agriculture, computers and engineering have been the other professions of my siblings and their children. My passions are people, the arts and animals, and my kids seem to have passions for animals/nature/visual arts, or musical arts.

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My Great Great Grandfather in Nova Scotia, the father of Reginald had Parkinson's and so did my father. By the way my father also looked a great deal like Reginald's father, FB Miles. They have strikingly similar golden brown eyes. Josephine Miles had severe arthritis and was in a wheelchair from age two forward. One my first cousins was in a wheelchair for the same condition by the time she was 20, my father's brother Alan's child, Ellen Miles. My father had six children and his brother seven children. My parents had ten grandchildren and ten genetically related great grandchildren. and two much loved adopted ones.  No one else ended up in a wheelchair or have turned up with Parkinson's disease.

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I have strong eyebrows that look like those of Emerson, along with our Hollywood Baldwin Mayflower cousins. My siblings, father, paternal grandfather, and great grandfather all have the eyebrows. I can see the eyebrows in an image online of Emerson's mother and of course my relationship to Emerson was through his maternal line. A type seems formed with the eyebrows, just as we look for type in dogs.

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There is still a lot of mystery in genetics. No Dal is perfect and neither are we. It appears that there are approximately 11 generations between myself and the Mayflower and most of those ancestors lived very long lives.  

My two youngest grandsons are by the way are registered Native Americans through their mother and therefore have an even older ancestry than the Mayflower in America. Americans are all immigrants. Even our AKC Dals. 

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