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 Plymouth, 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. John and Hope Chipman were not Tories, which was a later phenomenon, but what was known as Planters. John 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 much 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 had a noteworthy family.  Reginald Odber Miles, 1881-1929, married a lady named Josephine Lackner who had graduated from the University of Chicago and was a daughter of a physician. 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; while another brother Richard Billing Miles, 1913-2003, was went to Stanford and was Vice President of a Real Estate Bank and later a partner in a real estate business.

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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 and my common ancestry. 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. Two of the sons died in childhood. 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 grandparents. two landscape ink paintings on silk that the Kellly'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 from Kansas State University and is a partner in an architectural firm. Business, agriculture, software and engineering have been the other professions of my siblings and that of their children. One of my engineer brothers also has the largest orchard in the state of Kansas. I like art and literature and have degrees in the subjects. My sons are employed in fields akin to nature, as my youngest son in an Alaskan State Park Ranger and my oldest is a general manager and assistant in film production of a wild horse protection organization. My oldest son plays guitar and the youngest likes to paint.

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 as a child and her entire adult life, as was one my first cousins 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 no one else ended up in a wheelchair from a young age 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. A type seems formed with the eyebrows, just as we look for type in dogs.

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There are coincidences in relating to you the story of my family and my father's heritage in regard to talents, career choices, coloring, and/or health. One can see propensities of certain talents, or interests over the generations, perhaps all environmental happenstance and maybe genetic. My youngest grandson has a rare disorder, which geneticists at Children's Hospital have determined not to be genetic and only a very few people worldwide have the condition, which appears so far to be quite debilitating. No one could have predicted such a situation. It certainly points out the risks one has to take to chose to have children or perhaps breed Dalmatians.

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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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