My family tree is getting ever larger. The ancestor count now stands at 21,604. I found 2 Kings today. King Edward IV of England, 1442-1482, was my 14th Great Grandfather. And Rene Due de Anjou, Duke of Lorraine, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, 1449-1480, was my 15th Great Grandfather. Picture to follow (when I work out the technology for transferring the picture shown on Ancestry.com)

A collection of reminiscences – it’s time to write the next segment. When I was 62 I wrote a 112 page book of memories and reflections on my life to date. Now I am almost 84 – it’s time to write again and concentrate on the missing segment – now the title could be 2 countries, 21 years. A lot has happened in the intervening years from when I was in my early 60’s leading up to now. When I lie in bed at night I reflect on topics such as this.

This is a page from the Harvard Yearbook Class of 1932. One of the young men was my neighbor a few years later.

As I wrote in my previous blog entry, My Neighbor Mrs Nellie Crowley, became sick with cancer and died in 1952. The following year Mr. Crowley remarried and moved to the other side of Belmont. The years passed and I got to know the 2nd Mrs Crowley by a strange coincidence, 3000 miles away in California, on the other side of the country.

Mr. Crowley lived on into his 80’s and died in 1962. Sometime after his death the 2nd Mrs. Crowley moved to Berkeley California. And I too was then living in Berkeley and attending the University of California. We got in touch and we met occasionally for lunch on the Berkeley campus, within sight and sound of the burgeoning student unrest.. This was in the years 1964-1966 and we became good friends.

Now in my genealogy research I have discovered that Mr Crowley and his first wife Nellie were Irish. Both sets of parents had been born in Ireland and immigrated to the U.S. Mr Crowley (Herbert Litchfield Crowley) was from Maine. Nellie was a graduate of Radcliffe and she taught in the Boston Latin School for a number of years until she and Herbert married in 1908.

Herbert and Nellie married in August 1908 in Epworth Church in Cambridge. I found an account of their wedding in The Cambridge Chronicle September 5, 1908. I will share it with you in Part 3 of the Crowley story.