The French Connection

...and other drugs. 

Above: Hester Schooley Record 1860-1942

(Author's note: Sometimes family history just plans to stupefy you. It leaves you wandering up the road, asking, "What the Hell just happened?")

As always, unabashedly unedited...

THERE'S JUST NO WAY around it. 

The truth, too, is that for the most part, very little of it has anything to do with me. Further, 'the why or how' answer of how I came to know anything about Dan or anything about his family is as much a mystery today as it was a year ago - and even as to how we would have any genetic tie at all. 

There isn't one. 

All of it has seemed not only genealogically random but truly quite incredible. 

As they say, there's only one place to start, and that's at the beginning. I'm sure, though, that I've written about some of it before, and written about the peculiar DNA match that caused me to reach out in the first place. (Please forgive me for repeating myself.) It was (or is) one of those DNA matches that (somehow) matches up with both my mom and dad, and one that frankly just didn't make sense to me. However, I was curious and hopeful that the person on the other end of these matches would know more about them than I did, so I reached out.

As it turns out, the genetic situation was far more convoluted for Dan than it was for me. He explained he had no more clue as to what was behind our peculiar match than I did, but that his real issue (and or mystery) was that he'd discovered his father had been switched as a baby at birth in Kansas way back in 1943. 

Now this was a mystery that the existential genealogist in me couldn't resist. 

Looking back, that was the first confluence of events in our lives that seemed to overlap - "Kansas" likely being the key word here. And from that starting point, it all began. You see, I was able to help him, and to figure out just who the "switcheree" was between babies Bobby and Dwayne back in '43. But that's a tale I'm sure you've already heard by now.

         

Moving past this genealogical case of the "Great Baby Switcheroo," and after studying his ancestral lines, I could see that he had a very evident ancestral line to Mayflower passenger John Howland. This was interesting to me as I'm also a Howland descendant. Mayflower ancestry being a non-too-private passion of mine, I offered to review Dan's lineage further, and retrieve what proofs I could find to see about securing him membership in The General Society. He agreed, and with mutual enthusiasm, we embarked on what turned out to be a successful months-long project.

In the meantime, and through it all, I began to see more and more of a confluence of our multiple shared ancestral kinships. Our "ancestors-in-common" kept racking up, and now total at last count about five. While I know that this isn't uncommon, it's still curious. I should mention, too, that the flow of information between us, indeed info about our present-day life in general, about our kids and our families, etc., has been good. It's been great. There's been a nice and mutual reciprocity in the exchange of ancestry and information. In a nutshell, it's been enjoyable getting to know the person on the other end of that DNA match.

I did have questions, of course. Questions about him that were not my business. The fact that even the briefest of Internet searches revealed him to be a Soap Opera star, a Reality TV celebrity, and that his face was on several prominent magazine covers was, well, if nothing else, also quite incredible. I admit, for a mutt like me, it was all at least a bit intriguing. And given the peculiar circumstances in his father's birth ("the baby swap of '43"), and me being able to help him resolve it didn't hurt either. Neither did figuring out his Mayflower line, nor coming to understand that he breeds and owns champion race horses. I mean, seriously, what the heck?       

Above: Image of the more handsome man has been placed on the left...obviously? LOL.

Say what?

Hell, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that on some very real level, I like to think we've sort of become friends? Yeah, I know that's a lot. It's kinda one of those "don't delude yourself, old man" things, right? Oh well, Beats me.

(Of course, I naturally distrust these sorts of things - the concept of "actual friendship" being nothing more than some mental construct made from the short-circuiting neurons of some internal dopamine drip.)

I could tell he traveled in circles different from mine. It seemed obvious, but still not my business to ask about. I guess I was naive too, though always curious why he never seemed to have to "go to work" even if very much successfully self-employed. (I hope that makes sense...) As a part of the general bourgeoisie myself, understanding privilege or a life of seemingly "protected leisure" (?) wasn't something I could easily identify. Indeed, not my business. Again, still, I was curious.

It was about the time I started to randomly look at Hester that it all started to make more sense. 

Yes, Hester. I guess I should introduce her at this point. Hester Schooley Record - my great-great-grandmother. As you might have guessed, by then, I had also discovered an additional mutual "ancestor in common" between Dan and me. The name of this ancestor is William Buckman (1649-1716), and a guy who directly leads to my great-grandmother, Hester. Yes, William Buckman, who arrived on the good ship Welcome with William Penn and a host of other Quakers - and a guy who also leads directly to Dan's great-great-grandfather, Harry Banks French. 

Now I'd seen the name of Harry Banks French before. I'd encountered the name largely through working the family pedigree and assembling the parts of the Mayflower line for my new connection through his mother. Honestly, since his French family line was sort of "off to the side" of John Howland, I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I somewhat ignored the fact that his grandparents, his mother's parents, were first cousins and the grandchildren of, you guessed it, Harry Banks French. I've done genealogy long enough to know that marriages between first cousins are pretty frickn' normal and a lot more common than anyone ever mentions them to be. It just is. Besides, pointing it out is, outside of a genealogical setting, extremely rude and ultimately gauche. 

I knew well enough, too, that his family was a bit more upper crust than what I was used to looking at, and certainly more so than what I was ever related to. I mean, you don't generally mention places like Bryn Mawr unless you move in the better end of Pennsylvania society. True, too, is that Dan's mention of "a church my family built" is also usually a sign that you move among a higher echelon than the rest of us do. 

However, then, as now, these things don't really matter. I mean, I liked the guy - my new genetic connection - and I'd have felt the same way if he had turned out to be a truck driver from Poughkeepsie. For me, though, what was curious, and what I couldn't help but pick away at, was our shared ancestry from William Buckman of Billinghurst, Sussex, England. It made the connection between our respective great-great-grandparents oddly closer. 

Cue the damn dumbass dopamine drip. (Okay, not really, it just sounds cool to say that...)

I guess it was about then that I started to take more notice of Harry Banks French, my great-great-grandmother's fifth cousin.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Fifth cousin? Really, Jeff?

It's hardly a close tie. 

The only defense I have here is that concerning all the other matches between my new genetic connection, Dan, and me, well, they were all so ancient and all so removed from me, or my immediate family, or yes, if you will, "the present day." They didn't feel as close (?) or relevant (?).  For me, though, my great-great-grandmother Hester Record is close. She is relevant. And she was recent enough. Hell, my father had sat on her lap as a baby. All of a sudden, our common ancestry to William Buckman, and Hester's shared cousinship to Harry Banks French, felt a little more contemporary.

It made a little more sense??? Yeah, I know...not.

Okay, relax, it isn't like either side of our families was going to get together for a barbecue any time soon, but it made me ask, so just who was this guy, this Harry Banks French?

                 

Above: Harry Banks French 1857-1925

Excited about the discovery of a new "ancestor-in-common,"  that is William Buckman of the ship Welcome and William Penn fame, and that cousins "Hester and Harry" were an unusual piece of the jigsaw puzzle we share in common, I messaged my new genetic connection and shared some of the following secondary source information:

  Dan's: 

  Me: 

Yep: Old Grandpa Bill off the Welcome - right there in both our trees.

Dan replied: (and believe me, I am paraphrasing here...)  "Yes, Harry Banks French was a remarkable man, and one that we are all very grateful for."     

Cryptic, but hey, what do you expect from Superman? Duh.

So what do I know? Not much.

I knew that Harry's father, Clayton French, had started a family pharmacy back in Pennsylvania. I knew that Harry had improved the pharmacy and that he'd made it more successful. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to the notes I read that referred to a circa 1880s drug store business merger that became known as "Smith, Kline, and French." I mean it was familiar sounding enough to me, but again, who or whatever they were didn't mean a lot in terms of genealogy - but then I took another look at "Smith, Kline, and French."          

Yes, and there it was in 1952 dollars. This didn't account for subsequent, or rather evident, business sales/mergers. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense.

Now I'm pretty much gonna stop here. I began to see that "Smith, Kline, and French" (a company that lasted for years) became one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. And while the "French" was dropped from the name sometime in the 1970s-1980s, and SmithKline purchased Beecham and was again morphed into "GlaxoSmithKline" and is now owned by a British conglomerate called Haleon that is involved in joint ventures with Pfizer...Well, you can see where I am going with all of this. 

It's a company that makes or has brought you A LOT OF THINGS, from Thorazine to Brylcreem - and probably a few Covid vaccines to boot.           

 Harry Banks French kinda started it all.

Yeah, that explains one hell of a lot about my new friend, cousin, and genetic connection - Dan. It explains why this soap opera star, reality TV celebrity, race horse breeder, magazine cover guy, and generally good dude just donated a rather sizeable sum to the Mayflower Society.

To the GSMD? Just because? They'd better not take advantage of him, or they will answer to me.

So I guess I am kind of a dumbass. Should I have listened better to the ghost of Grandma Hester? Did she try to tell me about the French Connection or warn me about falling victim to another drug, one called the fallacy of believing in friendship that comes from "kinship?"

Maybe I just couldn't hear her. 

Anyway... Dan's a frickin' rockstar Superman dude - and best of all, he's also incredibly a bit of a genealogical geek. (That's the best part) All Brylcreem, lozenges, vaccines, and other pharmaceuticals aside - This particular Mayflower Descendant is a genuinely good guy, and he's actually kin? WTF?

Yeah, I know, Jeff. Whatever.

I just hope I'm not self-sabotaging myself into believing in another Shirley Temple Black moment. (Been there, done that - those of you who know me will know what I mean) You see, once people get what they need or want from you, they generally move on. It's the natural order of things to get tossed out like organic waste. 

You know, like DNA. (Lol)

But hey, we all know I got da issues. 

Life. Go figure.

☮